Overcoming Language Borders

When you take a closer look at media public­ation, especially at renowned press, you may often see the use of foreign-language expres­sions. Think of “zeitgeist”, “joie de vivre”, “machismo” or the like.

The truth is, national languages are to a great extent blends of other languages. For English this is in particular the case, since it draws its native vocab­ulary from two sources: Germanic and Romance stems.

Yet not only European languages have influ­enced and still do influence English speech and writing but languages from all over the world. This can be exemplified by listing words from the area of food and cooking, like, e. g., yogurt (Turkish), mocha (Arabic), soy (Japanese), curry (Tamil), bagel (Yiddish) und so on.