Linguistic contributions to English

DEFINITION: Contributions to American English made by immigrant speakers of other languages 

SIGNIFICANCE: English has long had the largest lexiconor rosterof vocabulary items of any language on Earth, in large part because of frequent borrowings from other tonguesespecially from Latin, Greek, Old Norse, and French. However, the multicultural nature of the United States, especially from the mid-nineteenth century onward, facilitated the adaptation of borrowed words and phrases into American English at an even greater rate than had been the case in Englandthe country from which the language derived. 

Before the English language was implanted in North America, most of its foreign linguistic influences had been the inadvertent results of military conquests or had come from deliberate attempts at language-engineering by scholars. In the North American colonies and later in the independent United States, changes in the language were more spontaneous and more organic. They were natural outgrowths of the intermingling of peoples from all over the world. The scope of immigrant influences on American English is perhaps best illustrated by examining contributions from the Romance languages of immigrants from countries such as France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the many Latin American nations and from the Germanic languages of immigrants from German-, Dutch-, and Scandinavian-speaking countries. Most of the words that have entered American English from the Romance languages pertain to folkways, food, and place names of both natural and artificial locations.

Folklorists employed the term “folkways” to encompass a wide array of professions, social roles, lifestyle issues, customs, dress, recreation, and folk beliefs. Many French terms that found their way into American English reflected the lifestyles and beliefs of immigrants in regions bordering on Quebec in the northeast and in Louisiana in the south. Examples included: 

•voyageurtrapper or trader who travels long distances 

•traiteurfolk healer or herbalist 

•lagniappegift or act of kindness extended to guests as a token of cordiality 

•fifoletspirit or witch manifesting a nighttime phosphorescence 

•loup garouwerewolf or similar creature of the night 

•gris-grisprotective magic devices 

Similar terms from the Spanish language include: 

•quincieneracelebration of a girl’s fifteenth birthday 

•buckarooterm for cowboy adapted from the Spanish vaquero, literally “cattler” 

•curanderofolk-healer, the Spanish equivalent of traiteur 

Words for apparel items also featured prominently in Spanish loanwords in American English. Examples included poncho, serape, and “ten-gallon hat.” The latter originated when speakers of the English language mistook the Spanish word galanfor the braid on a hatbandfor the English word “gallon”a liquid measurement. Many other words related to the folkways of Spanish-speaking immigrants pertained to items used in ranchingsuch as “lariat” from Spanish la reata for rope or noose. Folk music also has contributed many words, such as “mariachi”for the exuberant form of Mexican music featuring string and wind instruments originally played at marriages—the English word to which the name of the music is directly related. Names of instruments used in mariachi music also found their way into the English languageuitar” came from the Spanish guitaron for large guitar. 

Among the most readily recognized words from Italian were names for crime syndicatessuch as “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra.” During the late nineteenth century, American English adopted the Italian paisanosometimes rendered paisan in Englishfor peasant or worker as a jocular term for buddy or compatriot. 

Romance Food and Formations

Words from Romance languages denoting foodstuffs and structures flooded American English since the founding of the United Statesespecially since the nineteenth century. Italian words for pasta dishes such as “macaroni” and “spaghetti” entered the English language in England, but after millions of Italians immigrated to the United States during the nineteenth century, Italian restaurants became so commonplace that such Italian terms become more common in American usage than in British English. During the early twentieth century, “pizza” became an American staple, as did a number of coffee drinks of Italian originsuch as “espresso,” “cappuccino,” and “latte.” 

The Spanish language gave American English words such as “taco,” “tequila,” “enchilada,” and “burrito.” In numerous cases, the dishes were as much American-European hybrids as the words themselves. For example, enchiladas were a Mexican-American creationneither fully Spanish nor even wholly Mexican. American pizza had little in common with the Italian dish after which it is named. Many of the Franco-American food terms in American English came from French, French Caribbean, and French Canadian cooking in the American Southespecially in Louisiana. Examples included rouxa rich stock for sauces and gravyand jambalayaa meat-and-rice dish whose name came into English from Catalan by way of Spanish into Louisiana French. The thick, rich soup known as chowder was a French Canadian innovation introduced into New England cooking terminology. 

Place Names

As numerous as cuisine-related loanwords were in American English, Romance language names for types of places—both geographical and architectural—were equally common. Mexican Spanish gave southwestern American English terms, such as:

•hoosegow (jail)from juzgado, a place of the judged ones

•arroyoa direct Spanish borrowing for a type of dry riverbed common in the Southwest 

•mesaa flat, raised area of land from the Spanish word for table 

From Cajun Frenchthe dialect of French Canadian immigrants to Louisianacontributed “bayou” for swamp and “levee” for the earthworks used to protect lowlands from flooding. Another French contribution with wider usage in American English was “bureau.” The word was originally used for a bedroom desk or dresser before it was extended to a piece of office furniture, and finally to an office and the agency it housed. In this later sense, both “bureau”and its derivative “bureaucracy”were borrowed not only by international English but also by a number of other languages. 

Germanic Contributions

Borrowings into American English from the Germanic languages followed pathways similar to those of Romance languages. Food-related words were commonrom German came “strudel,” “noodle,” “sauerkraut,” “pretzel,” and the coffee-related equivalent of English “teatime,” “kaffeeklatsch.” Dutch gave American English “cruller” for a type of pastry and the even more commonly used word “cookie”unknown in British English before it was introduced from American English. The equivalent British English term had long been “biscuit”from an Old French word for “twice-baked” pastries. In American English, the same word underwent a semantic shift to designate round, scone-like portions of breadhe Dutch "cookie" filled the niche vacated by “biscuit.” 

A surprisingly large number of Germanic borrowings were words denoting types of peoplemany derogatory in nature. German examples include “bum” for a lazy or idle personfrom the verb bummeln meaning "to loaf". Yiddishthe German dialect used primarily by Jewsgave American English a veritable flood of insulting terms. “Yekl,” “klutz,” “schlemiel,” “schlimazel,” “schmo,” “schmuck,” and “schnook” all connoted stupidity or ineptitude to various degree. However, perhaps the most enduring and widespread insult from Germanic immigrant languages was the ubiquitous “dumb.” For centuries, the homonymic English word “dumb” meant mutein every other populous Germanic language, a near-identical word meant stupid or foolish. Examples included German’s "dumm" and Swedish and Danish’s "dum"he Old English word “dumb” simply borrowed the meaning of its Germanic cousins. 

Not all such Germanic borrowings are negative. “Boss” from Dutch and “ombudsman” from Swedish were both neutral terms. Yiddish’s “mensch” for a good-hearted individual denoted positivity. At the same time, the Romance languages contributed some insulting terms. American English’s “bimbo”for an attractive but unintelligent personis from the Italian work "bambino", for baby. “Boob” and “booby” probably derive from Spanish "bobo" for a fool or clown. 

Other Types of Contributions

The Romance and Germanic languages were not the only immigrant languages that made significant contributions to American English. For example, “egg foo young” and “chow mein” were examples of words derived from Chinese for food dishes actually devised by Chinese immigrants in the United States. Likewise, “kolache”a pastry popular among Czechs and Slovaksevolved in the United States into a sweeter treat reminiscent of American cinnamon rolls.

Immigration left traces on facets of American English that go beyond mere vocabulary. For example, among English language speakers in areas where French dialects had long been commonfor example, in Louisiana sometimes hears questions formulated without insertion of the default auxiliary verb “do.” Instead of asking “How did your clothes get wet?” a person might have asked “How your clothes got wet?” The latter sentence structure imitates French syntax. Another example of imitating French phrasing was the rapid-fire repetition of an adjective to suggest intensity, as in “It is hot-hot today.” to indicate the intensity in the temperature.

In regions in which many Americans are bilingual in English and Spanish languages, or else in close contact with such speakers, one often heard “leave” used with “to” to indicate a destination. For example, phrases like “They are leaving to school” instead of the standard phrase “They are leaving for school"a structure imitative of Spanishwhich employed the single-letter preposition "a" (to) in such circumstances.

Another phrase-structure affected by languages of immigrants may be the tag question—making a statement and immediately adding a brief yes or no question seeking confirmation or denial. In formal English, such questions involved complex formulations. For example, the tag on the simple statement, “Roger is driving” required copying over the verb “is”, choosing the appropriate pronoun “he”, and reversing the polarity of the statementpositive in this caseto negative, thus yielding, “Roger is driving, isn’t he?” In contrast, most European languagesincluding members of the Romance and Germanic familiesforewent such linguistic acrobatics by simply appending to a declarative statement a single word meaning “yes” or “no.” For example, "si" or "no" in Spanish is "ja" or "nein" in German. During the twentieth century, informal variants of tag questions became increasingly popular in American Englishas in “Roger is driving, right?” Such practices were likely patterned after similar constructions in many immigrant tongues. A peculiarity of grammar in the speech of the American South, the so-called “double modal” constructions such as “might could” or “might should” instead of “might be able” and “perhaps should,” may be legacies of Scottish immigrantssuch wording was once common in Scotland. 

Morphology

American morphology—aspects of English pertaining to roots and stems of words—and pronunciation also bore the imprint of immigration. For example, American English borrowed the common noun ending -o from Romance languages to append to English roots, yielding such hybrids as “weirdo” and “wino.” During the late 1990’s, the Italian and Spanish noun suffix -ista came into similar use, yielding hybrid words such as “fashionista”a term for a person obsessed with clothing trends. 

In the twenty-first century, a reverse pattern occurred where American English words morphed into usage in other languages. This often occurred with the vernacular of technology or social media. An example was the Spanish slang word “Googlear”sed as a verb, this meant for a person to locate an answer on the internet using Google as a search engine.  “Punto com” was the Spanish derivative of the American “dot com.” In French, to use "X"was to “tweetz,” while in German, the same action was called “twitterst.”  

In certain industriessuch as aviationEnglish was the international language of communication. Flight instructions between air traffic control and aircrews were conducted in English. Idiosyncrasies such as the number nine was pronounced as “niner,” and five pronounced as “fife” became globally shared. The twenty-first century saw many tech symbols enter worldwide, non-verbal usage. These included hashtags, abbreviations such as “LOL,” and thumbs-up icons to signify a message was liked.

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