# What words has English borrowed from other languages since 2000? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 28, 2016, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450 "2016-03-28T11:55:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/41 "2016-03-29T01:28:44Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > “Emoji” means “picture character” (_e_ = picture, _moji_ = character) in Japanese. It’s not derived from “emotion” or “emoticon,” if that’s what you’re thinking. (Though I’m sure the purely coincidental similarity between “emoji” and “emoticon” contributed to the widespread use of “emoji”.) Damn, that was a miss on my part!! Seemed like an obvious back-borrow since there are dozens (hundreds?) in Japanese. Not just English, but most people don’t realize that Japanese “Tempura” is back-borrowed from Portuguese (that is Portuguese -\> Japanese -\> English). ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/42 "2016-03-29T02:44:16Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Looks like it shows up sporadically, according to [google n-gram viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=umami&year_start=1800&year_end=2010&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cumami%3B%2Cc0), until about 1984 where it experiences a sudden jump in popularity, but around 2000 it experiences even another popularity surge. My recollection of it is that I wasn’t aware of the word until that second surge, but looking through Google books, it certainly was being used as it is today well before that. I had a food-nerd roommate in college, mid-nineties, who introduced me to it. He always liked to say, “Oooh, _mommy_!” in this lascivious voice. Such a nerd. I miss that dude. ---
**Author:** ![Arrendajo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Arrendajo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrendajo)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/43 "2016-03-29T02:57:12Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Filipino has borrowings from both Spanish and English, for some reason which escapes my mind right now… and it’s not as if it’s uncommon for a word which originally was borrowed to become another word’s parent, it happens all the time. It’s perfectly possible that the name mani-pedi for getting both at the same time entered the English language via Filipino nail parlors. Because the Philippines was a Spanish colony for many years before it became an American colony as spoils of the Spanish-American war. Interestingly, many Filipinos don’t recognize the Spanish loan words they use. I learned a little Tagalog when I had a Filipina girlfriend. “Glass of water” in Tagalog is “baso ng tubig” with the baso almost certainly on loan from the Spanish vaso for glass. Another time a group of us were sitting around eating corn on the cob and one of them asked me “Do you know how to say corn in Filipino?” “Maiz.” I said. It was a total guess, but they were all surprised at how much Tagalog I’d learned. It was interesting that even those of them who could speak Spanish didn’t recognize the Spanish loan words. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/44 "2016-03-29T03:24:37Z")
“Umami” has been around for a long time in English, but it meant something different when children said, “Ooo, Mommy!” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/45 "2016-03-29T06:32:45Z")
> [@Arrendajo](#): > > Because the Philippines was a Spanish colony for many years before it became an American colony as spoils of the Spanish-American war. The “escapes my mind” line was a Quijote-opener statement, **Arrendajo** 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/46 "2016-03-29T07:19:30Z")
How about “golazo”? It’s Spanish slang meaning _awesome goal_ in a football (soccer) match. Is that a word now in English? ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/47 "2016-03-29T07:41:00Z")
Another soccer word; vuvuzela > **[Vuvuzela](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuvuzela)** > > Brass > The vuvuzela /vuːvuːˈzɛlə/ is a horn, with an inexpensive injection-molded plastic shell about 65 centimetres (2 ft) long, which produces a loud monotone note, typically around B♭ 3 (the first B♭ below middle C). Some models are made in two parts to facilitate storage, and this design also allows pitch variation. Many types of vuvuzela, made by several manufacturers, may produce various intensity and frequency outputs. The intensity of these outputs depends on the blowing technique and p... ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/48 "2016-03-29T09:25:31Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > How about “golazo”? > > It’s Spanish slang meaning _awesome goal_ in a football (soccer) match. > > Is that a word now in English? It’s not slang, it’s a perfectly standard augmentative. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/49 "2016-03-29T09:34:35Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > How about “golazo”? > > It’s Spanish slang meaning _awesome goal_ in a football (soccer) match. > > Is that a word now in English? I am not into football whatsoever but I recall “Golaccio!” being a catchphrase during the 1990s, due to the show [Football Italia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_Italia#Gola.C3.A7o.21). ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/50 "2016-03-29T09:40:07Z")
> [@JR\_Brown](#): > > Some more English-Japanese-English borrowings (used mainly in dork circles): > > Cosplay - “costume play”, dressing up as a favorite pop-culture character for an event > Boys love / Girls love - genres of m/m and f/f romance fiction, respectively > mook - magazine/book hybrid (usually a publication with contents formatted like a magazine but printed as a perfect-bound softcover book, and with no pull date) Not familiar with that last one in that context - I’ve always understood “mook” to be a synonym for “goons” or “henchmen”, particularly in a video game, movie, or TV show. Does “Quinoa” count? I know it’s a food that’s been around a long time but I don’t recall it being a common thing in English until five years ago or so. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/51 "2016-03-29T13:40:31Z")
> [@Arrendajo](#): > > Because the Philippines was a Spanish colony for many years before it became an American colony as spoils of the Spanish-American war. Interestingly, many Filipinos don’t recognize the Spanish loan words they use. I learned a little Tagalog when I had a Filipina girlfriend. “Glass of water” in Tagalog is “baso ng tubig” with the baso almost certainly on loan from the Spanish vaso for glass. Another time a group of us were sitting around eating corn on the cob and one of them asked me “Do you know how to say corn in Filipino?” “Maiz.” I said. It was a total guess, but they were all surprised at how much Tagalog I’d learned. It was interesting that even those of them who could speak Spanish didn’t recognize the Spanish loan words. And many (most?) Filipinos have Spanish names, too. ---
**Author:** ![iceiso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@iceiso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iceiso)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/52 "2016-03-29T15:27:52Z")
“Ramen”. Back in the 90’s, most people I knew referred to Ramen as “Cup Noodles” (the brand), since their only exposure to the dish was the instant make-at-home variety. These days along with the proliferation of Ramen restaurants, I see the term being used with more frequency. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/53 "2016-03-29T16:43:03Z")
I also vote for “emoji”. It’s very familar with people under 30, its not just a back borrowing of english and its ubiquitous to the point that Apple OS X has “emoji & symbols” on every programs edit menu. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/54 "2016-03-29T17:17:09Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > I also vote for “emoji”. It’s very familar with people under 30, its not just a back borrowing of english and its ubiquitous to the point that Apple OS X has “emoji & symbols” on every programs edit menu. Get thee to post 21! ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/55 "2016-03-29T17:48:31Z")
What’s a mook? (Or, “what’s a mook?”) Found it: [Mook Fight - YouTube](http://youtu.be/JmrQ70gJUJI) ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/56 "2016-03-29T18:13:17Z")
I don’t know how long it lasted but in the UK using the slang “poonany” (which has similar origins to the US term poontang) for female genitalia went from an obscure west indian term, to fairly mainstream slang after Ali G popularized it in the early 2000s. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/57 "2016-03-29T19:08:09Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > “Schadenfreude” was in English dictionaries in the 1980s, but the use was very rare. It appeared in periodicals less than 100 times between 1995 and 1999, but use began to grow by leaps in 2000. In 2003, a reporter asked Martha Stewart if she thought people were experiencing schadenfreude at her arrest, and this seemed to trigger an avalanche of incidences of the word. In 2009, _After Deadline_ posted an article called “The Age of Schadenfreude.” FWIW, The Simpsons used it in 1991 (“When Flanders Failed”), and it didn’t seem that obscure to me at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/58 "2016-03-29T19:32:07Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > “Schadenfreude” was in English dictionaries in the 1980s, but the use was very rare. It appeared in periodicals less than 100 times between 1995 and 1999, but use began to grow by leaps in 2000. In 2003, a reporter asked Martha Stewart if she thought people were experiencing schadenfreude at her arrest, and this seemed to trigger an avalanche of incidences of the word. In 2009, _After Deadline_ posted an article called “The Age of Schadenfreude.” Google’s [Ngram viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Schadenfreude&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2CSchadenfreude%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3BSchadenfreude%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bschadenfreude%3B%2Cc0) shows it was used in books at least since the mid-1800s, and was not infrequent in the 1930s. While it certainly has become more popular since the early 1900s, I don’t think it can be counted as a word that has been borrowed recently. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/59 "2016-03-29T19:33:52Z")
> [@iceiso](#): > > “Ramen”. Back in the 90’s, most people I knew referred to Ramen as “Cup Noodles” (the brand), since their only exposure to the dish was the instant make-at-home variety. > > These days along with the proliferation of Ramen restaurants, I see the term being used with more frequency. Certainly, by the early-mid-90s, ramen as a word was pretty much ubiquitous around here. (That’s when I went to college, 1993-1998). It was usually of the Maruchan plastic-wrapped variety, but also the cup variety. The something you’d order at a restaurant or have a restaurant dedicated to variety, though was not known. It was just cheap college student food usually sold for something like 5 or so for a buck. Pretty much everyone I knew, though, called it ramen. I personally have never heard the phrase, to my knowledge, “cup noodles.” ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2016, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450/60 "2016-03-29T19:37:27Z")
“Cup Noodles” Ramen Noodle Soup is a registered trademark of Nissin. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-words-has-english-borrowed-from-other-languages-since-2000/750450.md?page=4)