Why do some non-English speaking cultures use some English words?

Why do English speaking people adopt some foreign language words? Voila! Deja vu. Zeitgeist. Ach du lieber. Caro mio. Sometimes, other languages have words for which English does not have an equivalent. Sometimes, we just like the sound of the word. Mostly, I think it’s the fact that English has become the language most known internationally. Stop is stop in many, many countries. If you’re advertising and your audience is likely to speak another language, you’d use that language. Don’t fight it, learn some Japanese!

“English; A language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages, and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.”

We do it all the time. Ciao, gesundheit, aficionado, persona non grata, croissant, al fresco, mosquito, carte blanche, schlep, faux pas, pro bono, adios! Et cetera,,,,

http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-words.php

For what it’s worth only about 10% of English words are “original”, the rest are borrowed. A huge proportion from Scandinavia. What with all the Nordic invasions of the British Isles they essentially ended up plopping a Nordic vocabulary into the English grammatical structure. I suspect this is a large part of why Old English is so incomprehensible to modern English speakers.

Unless a language group is totally isolated there will always be cross-pollination.

I know exactly what you’re talking about. Like hearing a Japanese contestant say “Greato!”
The touch of English is like a spice. It is used sparingly so everyone can understand it but still enough to add a touch of the exotic.
Domo Arigatou, Mr Roboto.

Whenever I answer the phone, I say “Maki Maki?”

For the same reason that English uses foreign words. Because some words or phrases just don’t translate well.

I know everyone is saying “English does this too” and that’s true, but I don’t think that’s what the OP is getting at. For example, I like a lot of Japanese pop music and there are some artists where every line in the song includes at least one English word. This is not uncommon at all. And this really doesn’t occur in American pop music. Can you think of any American bands who use words from other languages in every line and is that as common as the reverse is in Japan? My Japanese professor also told me that some Japanese words for things are being replaced by English terms, such as saying “kicchin” for “kitchen” rather than “daidogoro”.

In other words, it seems like English plays a much larger role in Japan than other languages do in American English. It’s true we have things like “deja vu” and such, but would we ever title a TV program in Spanish unless it were a Spanish-language TV program to begin with?

In Japan, as well as lots of other countries, English is commonly understood and its studied in schools. So most people have a general grasp of the language.

Japan just likes English a lot. They always seem to have a general fascination with foreigners and adopt a whole lot of Western culture. Which is probably why you see so much spattered English all over their stuff, in music, games, anime, titles, etc.

Also, the language doesn’t always have appropriate words for certain things. So they’ll use an English word. Which usually ends up as “Engrish” (bastardized English, sometimes to hilarious ends…), because it usually ends up spelled differently and pronounced like a Japanese word.

I’ve noticed that in Bollywood films that are intended solely for the Indian market the characters often don’t just speak the odd word but whole sections of dialogue in English.

@xnightflowerx “Also, the language doesn’t always have appropriate words for certain things.”

My uneducated gut reaction to this is German always has a word for it. At least that’s what I conclude when English has to absorb words like schadenfreude to get the point across.
I totally spelled that right the first time.

@flutherother The long hold by the British of India resulted in a very great number of English speakers in India, so no surprise it’s still used a lot.It seems to me that the smaller the world gets, the more understanding of each others languages will occur. I wonder if the time will come when we all speak polyglot.

@DominicX definitely understands what I mean. Most of the rest, not so much. I’ll see if I can use a better example. Imagine you are Flingernese, from Flinger. You’re using an iPod Touch that was made for the Flingenese people. Everything, and I mean everything, on the device and the screen is in the Flingenese language—except for the word ‘Play.’ That’s in English. And there most definitely is a Flingenese word for ‘play’ in this context.

That’s the kind of thing I mean.

Japan has some odd fascination with English language and Roman characters. That’s why they have all those tee-shirts that make absolutely no sense.

^^^ I always wondered why their English T’s didn’t make any sense. (Hah)

There is only one way to say Jesus, Elvis, and Coca-Cola.

For the same reason English speaking cultures use French words.

I suppose. The odd thing is, I can’t get a definitive answer from the Japanese people I work with. If they can’t give me an answer I guess what everyone has said is correct.

A simple definitive answer is this: Some thing or some concept emerged outside of Japan first. When Japanese people learned of this, they had no word in their own vocabulary. Then they had the option to use the original or apply loan translations. The scientific term is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque

Maybe so, but I find it hard to believe that Japan never had a word for ‘play’ or ‘score’ or other words that I would consider common to any culture. But, what do I know? That’s why I asked the question.

I’m pretty sure Japan always had a word for ‘play’, because playing children is a universal trait, in fact it’s common and necessary for all mammals. But every culture produces different toys, so perhaps ‘play’ was borrowed for that reason.

Sounds reasonable. I think the most jarring part about it, though, is that it’s not in the same alphabet as everything else. I could see if they used the word ‘play’ (for example) when talking, or spelling it phonetically in their own letter system.

To me, it’s like watching TV and having everything in the Latin alphabet with one word in Greek letters tossed up on the screen.