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Triloon

(506 posts)
2. Lexical Borrowing
Tue Jul 26, 2022, 12:50 PM
Jul 2022

This will be a very interesting study to browse through. There are always surprising things to be learned from the origins of words.
I want to address your sentence - (" Borrows from" well one way of saying stolen by colonizers/slave masters I suppose) . It is sensible, but the word "Borrowing" here is a technical term in linguistics. It is awkward in ordinary use because everyone knows such words are never going to be returned after being borrowed. In the confusing world of linguistics Lexical Borrowing is brought from the Old English word for Becoming. I think "Adopted" is a better word for the process in ordinary use.
English, especially American English, is a huge sponge for non-English words. English contains words adopted from over 120 other languages. For instance "very", in my first sentence, is from the French "vrai", meaning "true". "Algebra" is adopted from Arabic, "Ketchup" is from Chinese. Any prolonged exposure to other cultures results in some exchange of words. It's just part of the process of trying to understand each other. All other languages have these "borrowed" words, too. Korean borrows from Chinese, the various languages of India all "borrow" words from each other, as do the many languages of Africa. It seems like the whole world has adopted the American English word "okay".
The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language is king of this sort of work and I'm certain their Lexicon of African American English will be credible and fascinating.

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