Why Does English Borrow So Many Words From Other Languages?

"Algebra," "chocolate," and "shampoo" all started out as words from somewhere else entirely.

Here's a fun trick: try to name five English words that were actually invented by English speakers, from scratch, with no help from any other language. It's harder than you'd think — because English has spent over a thousand years borrowing words from basically everywhere.

English has always been a borrower

Linguists sometimes joke that English doesn't just borrow words from other languages — it follows them down a dark alley and takes everything in their pockets. It's not really an insult. English grew the way it did because of centuries of trade, travel, invasion, and cultural exchange, and each wave left words behind.

A few real examples

• "Algebra" comes from Arabic al-jabr, from a 9th-century mathematics book written in Baghdad.
• "Shampoo" comes from Hindi chāmpo, meaning to massage, brought into English during long contact between Britain and South Asia.
• "Chocolate" comes from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec people of central Mexico, by way of Spanish.
• "Tea" comes from a Chinese word, tê, carried into English through centuries of trade routes.
• "Tsunami" comes directly from Japanese, meaning "harbor wave."

Each of these words arrived in English attached to something new — a mathematical idea, a food, a natural event — that English speakers didn't already have their own word for.

Why borrowing happens

Words usually travel the same paths that people, goods, and ideas travel. When traders, travelers, or new neighbors bring something unfamiliar — a food, an invention, a custom — the word for it often comes along too, especially if there's no existing word that fits. Over generations, that borrowed word can stop sounding "foreign" at all and just become... English.

Try it yourself

Pick three ordinary words you use all the time — maybe from food, clothing, or technology — and look up where they actually came from. You might be surprised how far they've traveled to reach your sentence.