Many English words are borrowed from other languages, like rucksack from German and shampoo from Hindi. Others don't even look English, as the German kindergarten or fjord, from Norwegian. Even Latin expressions like et cetera, and many words from French, like cafe don't even sound English. It is said to be that there is no such thing as pure English. English is a delectable, slow-cooked language of languages. As lexicographer Kory Stamper explains, “English has been borrowing words from other languages since its infancy.” As many as 350 other languages are represented and their linguistic contributions make up about 80% of English! Ranking from most influential to least, English is composed of words from: Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Russian, Maori, Hindi, Hebrew, Persian, Malay, Urdu, Irish, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Chinese, Turkish, Norwegian, Zulu, and Swahili. And, that’s not even 10% of the 350 languages in the English melting pot. If a borrowed word is spoken by a large majority of people regularly and its meaning no longer needs to be explained, then the word has been conventionalized. Popular borrowed words are everyday words. You might not even realize that some of them came from another language. Most popular loanwords are the result of cultural contact. Many of them describe food, the arts, and entertainment. You probably know sushi comes from Japanese, and taco comes from Spanish, by way of Mexico. But some other food-related loanwords you might have forgotten are pizza from Italian, lemon from Arabic, and tart from French (the French spell it tarte). As you'd imagine, learning about English borrowed words from other languages is linked with the history of the English language itself.