An Exposé on English Loanwords

Have you ever seen English words spelled with simplified letters, for example naivete instead of naïveté?

This bums me out a bit. Because I think these loanwords are one of the best things about English. It makes language so flexible and rich.

Usually, people type the simplified form of a word because doesn’t know how to type special characters. But, sometimes it’s because of a decision made for early computers.

So, I wanted to post a sampling of loanwords with uncommon letters or accents. See below.

In a later post, I’ll follow up with some notes on how to type these characters on your keyboard. And I’ll finish up with a bit of background on why this problem exists.

Some Interesting Words

English borrows most heavily from Germanic and Romance languages using characters/accents/graphemes like these:

• Cedilla: the ç in Curaçao
• Circumflex: the û in crème brûlée
• Acute Accent: the é in cliché
• Grave Accent: the è in pièce de résistance
• Trema / Umlaut: the ïin naïve or the ü in über
• Tilde: the ñ in piña colada

But, there are also a long tail of interesting words from other languages from Slavic, Turkic, Arabic, and other language families!

French

• apéritif
• attaché
• cliché
• coup d’état
• crème brûlée
• déjà vu
• exposé
• éclair
• façade
• passé
• pièce de résistance
• naïve
• naïveté
• resumé / résumé
• touché
• sauté

Spanish

• El Niño
• piñata
• piña colada
• adiós
• créole

German

• über
• gemütlich

Other Languages

• Dutch
  • blasé
• Portugese
  • Ção: a greeting
  • Açaí: the antioxidant-packed berry
• Basque
  • Curaçao: the Carribean island and the blue drink
• Greek
  • æther
• Turkic
  • café / قهوة
  • élixer / الإكسير
• Japanese
  • daimyō
  • Pokémon

Conclusion

This is just a limited list of examples. But I love that the English language is such a mutt. It makes the language rich. And it emphasizes that America is a nation of immigrants.

I use this list as a reference sometime. And, I hope it sparks some curiosity in you as well.

Next up, I’ll post some practical guides on how to type these characters (and more) on your operating system. See part 2: Adiós to Simplified Loanwords