Who is Eddy Peters?

[Douglas G. Wilson]

Is English more aggressive in borrowing than other languages are? How does
the volume of Swedish loan-words in English compare with the volume of
English loan-words in Swedish? Maybe that's not a fair comparison; try it
with English vis-a-vis Spanish then. Chinese is considered conservative in
this respect, so the number of direct borrowings from English in Chinese is
relatively small -- but I think larger than the number transferred the
other way.

A better example of an aggressive borrower (and I don't intend any
negative/pejorative connotation at all) might be Japanese, with perhaps >
60% of the lexicon borrowed from Chinese, perhaps > 10% (and growing) from
English. The Chinese contribution is perhaps comparable to the contribution
of French to English ... but Chinese-speakers never ruled in Japan for a
moment. And note that Japanese phonetics is not favorable for borrowing
from English: e.g., it wouldn't 'make sense' to borrow English "bus" >
Japanese "basu" and also English "bath" > Japanese "basu", Japanese of
course having natural native terminology available for both -- but both
were in fact adopted and both homophones are now absolutely standard
Japanese, as are "OL" (so written, pronounced "oueru") = "office lady" and
thousands of other English-based words, including such pairs as "brake" and
"break". (Phonetic limitations were ignored in adoption of Chinese words
too, so that there are many Sino-Japanese homophones.) Other sources are
accepted too -- e.g., Japanese "furiitaa" = "freelance worker" apparently
is a contraction of "furii arubaitaa" < English "free" + German "Arbeit" +
(German and/or) English "-er".

Even things native to Japan take English-based designations -- e.g., "Mild
Seven" cigarettes, "Pokemon" (< "pocket monster"), "rabu hoteru" (= "love
hotel"), "nopan" (< "no pant(ie)s") (e.g., applied to a
restaurant/coffee-house where the waitresses wear skirts and other clothing
but no underpants -- I've never heard of such an institution in the
Anglophone world [although perhaps those savants who've "been around" a
little more can correct me ... and recommend an address]).

Apparently in current Japanese "esunikku fuudo" = "ethnic food" [the words
from English, even the grammar non-Japanese to the extent that "esunikku"
has other applications] refers to "foreign" cuisine -- such as Indian or
African, I suppose. It does not apply to Japanese cuisine, and it also does
not apply to 'American', Italian, French, or other conventional Western
cuisines, nor to Chinese food: I guess these are considered fully adopted
into Japanese culture. I suppose this is similar to American usage: when
someone mentions "ethnic restaurants" one doesn't think of pizzerias and
Taco Bells. Recently I watched a Japanese-language Japanese-TV ad for KFC,
which featured the spoken words "juicy chicken ... pumpkin biscuit ...
coleslaw ..." with a few Japanese words thrown in. The carry-out bag was
labeled "Kentucky best select" -- no Japanese on the bag at all. It is hard
to picture, say, a Chinese-food carryout ad on American TV wherein the
words "juicy", "chicken", "rice", etc. are spoken in Chinese only, and
wherein the carry-out bag has only Chinese characters on it.

I sometimes think English doesn't borrow aggressively enough. In the
subject line of this message is the Latin word "re", useful and succinct,
only marginally adopted into English. The Japanese topic marker "wa" could
replace clumsy English expressions, but it never does. The French word
"selon" would be handy. And so forth.

-- Doug Wilson