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> Didn't the Japanese have bread or balconies before the Portuguese arrived? How does that work? I ask myself that every day. I think the answer is prestige.

> Didn't the Japanese have bread or balconies before the Portuguese arrived? How does that work? I ask myself that every day. I think the answer is prestige. In my language, Romanian, many words are borrowed from English because there's no home-grown equivalent, like "hacker". But even common words are being replaced with English ones. E.g. fashion instead of modă, know-how instead of cunoștințe (knowledge), brand — marcă, however – însă (you know your language is in danger of disappearing when the conjunctions are being replaced). This is in spite of the fact that people can often hardly pronounce the English words, for example businessman is pronounced /biznismen/ (with no way to differentiate between man and men), or pronouncing "guard" as "goo-ard".

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
Sure, there are loanwords that have become rooted in Romanian. But (unless one is part of a minority of people using English every day e.g. at work) a lot of those English words in Romanian are affectations of youth that disappear with age. The linguistic behavior of all my hipster friends changed radically as soon as they settled down into staid family life.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Sometimes they don't disappear with age and they become the new standard for the next generation. If age-related reversion to the old way of speaking was a universal given then we wouldn't see half the linguistic drift that we do.
- xdennis 3y ago
  I don't think they're affectations of the youth. Take the term "fake news". If journalists were in the business of informing people they would translate it ("știri false"), but they always say "fake news". You also hear experts use English terms because it makes them look more sophisticated. For example instead of saying the equivalent of "Ukrainians need to be trained to use American weapons" with all-Romanian words, you'll hear "Ukrainians need KNOW-HOW to use American weapons" with "know-how" being untranslated, even though this sentence is more awkward than the first one.
earthboundkid 3y ago
The one bit of Romanian I learned there: Merci!

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

Sure, there are loanwords that have become rooted in Romanian. But (unless one is part of a minority of people using English every day e.g. at work) a lot of those English words in Romanian are affectations of youth that disappear with age. The linguistic behavior of all my hipster friends changed radically as soon as they settled down into staid family life.

AlecSchueler 3y ago
Sometimes they don't disappear with age and they become the new standard for the next generation. If age-related reversion to the old way of speaking was a universal given then we wouldn't see half the linguistic drift that we do.
xdennis 3y ago
I don't think they're affectations of the youth. Take the term "fake news". If journalists were in the business of informing people they would translate it ("știri false"), but they always say "fake news". You also hear experts use English terms because it makes them look more sophisticated. For example instead of saying the equivalent of "Ukrainians need to be trained to use American weapons" with all-Romanian words, you'll hear "Ukrainians need KNOW-HOW to use American weapons" with "know-how" being untranslated, even though this sentence is more awkward than the first one.

earthboundkid 3y ago

The one bit of Romanian I learned there: Merci!