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Troo (Offline)
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Posts: 240
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: UK
05-12-2009, 08:29 AM

It's remarkably silly to try and claim loanwords belong to any language. They are exactly that - loanwords. Although English is a mix of Latinate and Germanic languages (and thus contains 600,000 common-vocabulary words, as opposed to the 200,000 common-vocabulary words in French or 300,000 in German), usage, spelling and pronunciation have shifted so much over the centuries that it is it's own tongue.

Words and phrases like fjord, cul de sac, a priori, deus ex machina, tagiatelle and so on have changed neither in spelling, pronunciation or meaning since they were adopted by the English, and thus remain loanwords. We all use them, we all understand what they mean, and eventualy one day they may mutate to become genuinely English. But at this moment in time they remain of the language which spawned them - particularly Latin words and phrases, as Latin is not evolving and changing with time, so their meanings will never be altered within the context of native speech.

Give yourself a little credit for knowing a large number of foreign words


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