10 English Words BORROWED From Other Languages (French, Japanese, Chinese etc.)

Eat Sleep Dreamers the English language is made up of words from around the world. We

have borrowed words from every language that I can think of. I mean, more than half of

the English words are from either Latin or French, that's incredible. So today we're

going to look at the top ten words the world has given the English language. I think you

are going to like this one guys and all that is coming right up after we meet another Eat

Sleep Dreamer.

Our first word comes from French. Now I told you guys there are many French words in the

English language. I think it's something like thirty percent which is incredible. Really

that is absolutely huge, isn't it? Now the first word we're going to look at today is

entrepreneur. And that is somebody that starts a business. I'm seeing this word used a lot

in the media on social media, entrepreneur it's a fantastic word. The stress is on the

last syllable entrepreneur. An example sentence 'I know a lot of people that want to be an

entrepreneur.' Ok, let's look at number two.

Our next word is from Italian, paparazzi. Paparazzi are the group of freelance photographers

that follow you know celebrities or high-profile people in order to take photographs of them

and then sell it for a high price. The famous case that I remember was Lady Diana being

chased by the paparazzi and she would always have photographers trying to take photographs

of her and that put a lot of pressure on her. That's obviously a negative example but yeah

the photographers that try to take photos of film stars musicians, they are called the

paparazzi. An individual is a paparazzo but the noun, the larger noun is paparazzi. Now

as you can see the pronunciation is very English, it's not how an Italian would say this word.

Whenever we borrow a word we put it into our own pronunciation so paparazzi is how I would

say it. The stress is on the third syllable 'paparazzi' An example sentence 'there are

loads of paparazzi waiting outside the restaurant.' Our third word is from German and it is 'doppelganger'.

This is an amazing word, I love this one. This basically means somebody looks exactly

the same as you but they are not you, they are not your twin but they look exactly like

you. The stress is on the first syllable doppelganger. 'Dude, there is a doppelganger of you at my

work.'

Now Chinese has given English so many words as well and this is my favourite phrase of

all 'chop chop'. So I think it's from Cantonese and it's a kind of mangled version of the

original Chinese. But it basically means hurry up, like quickly quickly. So imagine you are

trying to get your children to school and they are taking ages putting on their shoes

you might say to them 'come on guys, chop chop' like 'come on! Hurry up!' Is kind of

what you mean there. So chop chop just means hurry up, do it quicker and it comes from,

originally from Chinese. I love that phrase Chop Chop.

Number five comes from Japan and Japan has given so many words to British English particularly

modern British English. And this word is emoji. Emoji stands for picture character I believe

in Japanese and yeah we now use it all the time in our Whatsapp messages or in our instant

messaging, whatever it might be. We use the schwa at the beginning 'emoji' and the stress

is on the second syllable 'emoji'. Example sentence 'I love using emojis'.

Number six is actually a Yiddish word. Now the Yiddish language is the historical language

of the Ashkenazi Jews and there are a lot of words that have come from the Yiddish language

into particularly British English. This one is one of my favourites. "Klutz' it's a noun

and it describes somebody that is very accident-prone, they are very clumsy. So if you are always

dropping things, knocking things over, spilling drinks or you are always falling over you

could be described as a klutz. Somebody that has the characteristic of someone that is

very clumsy and accident-prone. I love this word. 'Oh he's such a klutz.' 'oh my God!'

So somebody that drops something you can say 'oh what a klutz.'

Of course loads of Spanish words have made it into the English language and this one

is perhaps the most famous, siesta. It's a noun and it means a short sleep. Usually after

lunch but we use it more generally to just talk about any kind of short sleep. Now in

English we could also use nap to have a nap. So in the afternoon, let's say it's a Sunday

afternoon and you are feeling kind of tired 'I'm just going to have a nap' or 'I'm just

going to have a siesta' So you could say either, you could say nap siesta, it doesn't really

matter. Everyone kind of knows what siesta means now in English so yeah it's up to you.

As I said before French has given English so many words and so many phrases. And in

fact we use the French phrases so much that we don't even have an English phrase for this.

So when you are about to start dinner or start a meal you would say to everyone 'bon appetit'

and it means enjoy your food but there is no phrase in English to describe the same

thing so we would just say bon appetit. Students have asked me 'Tom what do you say in English

when people say bon appetit?' and I say 'we say bon appetit.' Like I don't think there

is another phrase. Like enjoy your meal everyone perhaps. Bon appetit is the perfect phrase

for it. Also when someone is going on holiday you could say 'bon voyage' and that means

like have a good holiday. So yeah that's also a nice phrase that we've taken from French.

This is by far my favourite French phrase to come into English 'deja vu'. Now deja vu

is that strange feeling you get when you think that you have experienced this situation before.

You feel like you've been here, you've done this thing. Everything was exactly like this,

really strange feeling. So maybe you meet somebody and you are like 'I've got this strange

sense of deja vu.' Like I've met them before or you know like we've been in this situation

before. Really strange feeling, deja vu. Now this os by far my favourite French word to

come into the English language, deja vu. It's that strange sense that you get that you've.

Alright, I'm just joking we have actually done this before. I was just joking. Alright,

next one, next one.

The final word is from India and I think from the Hindi language which is guru. And it means

kind of teacher but what has happened now is that it's been taken into the English language

and used to mean a broad meaning of teacher. So for example if you are a social media guru

that means you are an expert in social media. If you are a management guru then you are

an expert in management. So it's taken a form to mean like an expert in something. So it's

not just generically a teacher it's now come to mean an expert in English. So guru, a guru.

You could be a love guru which is an expert about love. So yeah I like that one, I think

that's pretty good. I'm going to be an English guru. Yeah, i like the sound of that. I'm

going to be an English guru. That sounds way too impressive, I'm definitely not an English

guru.

Now why do i think it's important to know where these words come from? Well, I think

obviously language is a part of culture and in the words you get to understand the history

of Britain and the English language. You've got the movement of people so the French coming

to conquer England and leaving their words within the English languages. You've got colonialism

with Britain colonising India so then you have the influence of Indian words into English

there. You've got technology, so for example look at Japan and they're creating technology

and giving words to the English language. Of course you've got food as well and I mean

Italy with all their incredible food has given us things like pizza and spaghetti. So these

words come from so many different places and it's an amazing way to kind of understand

the movement of people and culture and the way the world is kind of sharing everything

that it has with each other. So I think understanding where words come from is a fascinating part

of learning a language.

Guys in the comments below I want you to write in the words that the English language has

borrowed from your language. So whatever they are I want you to share your knowledge with

the rest of the Eat Sleep Dream English community. That would be amazing. if you've enjoyed this

lesson please give it a big thumbs up. Make sure you subscribe and also hit the notification

bell so that you don't miss a single lesson. Because I release new lessons every Tuesday

and every Friday teaching you fresh modern British English. Thank you so much for watching

guys, this is Tom, the Chief Dreamer, saying goodbye.