Most of what you’re reading right now isn’t originally English. Some estimates suggest that up to 80% of English words trace back to other languages, and a substantial share of the words in large dictionary analyses are from French alone, courtesy of the Norman Conquest. Your morning routine proves the point before you’ve had breakfast: you drink café (French), do the maths using algebra (Arabic), refer to yourself as “they” when talking about someone else (Old Norse), sing karaoke on a night out (Japanese), and melt chocolate (Nahuatl) into a dessert. English didn’t invent most of its own vocabulary. It borrowed, adapted, and moved on.
What counts as a loanword in this list of borrowed words in English?
A loanword is a word English took from another language and kept using, more or less as is. “Café” from French, “kindergarten” from German, “safari” from Swahili. That’s a direct borrowing.
A calque, by contrast, translates the meaning of a foreign phrase piece by piece rather than lifting the word itself. “Skyscraper” isn’t borrowed from anywhere, but “flea market” is a calque of the French marché aux puces, and “loanword” is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort. Sneaky, right?
What actually turns a foreign word into an English one is adaptation. Once English speakers start changing the pronunciation, respelling it, or bending its meaning, it stops being a foreign import and becomes just… a word. That shift from “borrowed” to “ours” is the whole story of this article.
How English acquired borrowed words: the main historical waves
English has picked up vocabulary in several distinct waves, each tied to a specific slice of history: Old Norse invasions, the Norman Conquest, the Renaissance revival of Latin and Greek, and the global trade and travel of the modern era.
- Old Norse (8th to 11th century) — Viking settlers left English with everyday essentials: “sky,” “window,” “knife,” and even the pronouns “they,” “them,” and “their.”
- Norman French (11th to 15th century) — After 1066, French became the language of the court, the law, and the kitchen, giving us “justice,” “parliament,” “beef,” and “pork.”
- Latin and Greek (Renaissance onward) — Scholars borrowing directly from classical texts brought “species,” “data,” “photograph,” and “democracy” into scientific and academic English.
- Early Modern trade and exploration — Contact with Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands added “cargo,” “piano,” and “yacht.”
- Modern global exchange (19th century to today) — Migration, cuisine, and mass media keep the borrowing going, from “sushi” to “glitch.”
Each wave left fingerprints on a different part of the vocabulary. Norse gave English its bones; French dressed it in legal robes and fed it dinner.
Common borrowed words grouped by source language
Here’s the part you came for: a working list of borrowed words in English, organised by where they came from, with a note on what each language tended to hand over.
French gave English much of its legal, culinary, and fashion vocabulary, a direct legacy of Norman rule.
- Café, restaurant, cuisine, ballet, fiancé, garage, chic, bureaucracy, entrepreneur, souvenir, jury, attorney
Latin and Greek dominate science, medicine, and academic language, largely thanks to Renaissance scholarship.
- Species, data, photograph, democracy, chaos, telephone, chronology, virus, campus, alumnus, museum, gymnasium
Old Norse supplied everyday, high-frequency words so deeply embedded that most speakers never question them.
- They, them, their, sky, window, knife, egg, husband, skin, anger, take, cake
German contributed education terms, food, and a handful of ideas too specific for existing English words.
- Kindergarten, hamburger, pretzel, angst, wanderlust, doppelganger, poltergeist, delicatessen
Italian shaped the vocabulary of music, food, and architecture almost single handedly.
- Piano, opera, studio, volcano, balcony, graffiti, umbrella, pasta, espresso, soprano
Spanish left its mark through exploration and trade with the Americas.
- Patio, plaza, mosquito, tornado, canyon, ranch, guerrilla, siesta, macho
Arabic supplied much of English’s scientific and mathematical vocabulary, often filtered through Latin or Spanish.
- Algebra, alcohol, sofa, coffee, cotton, magazine, admiral, alkali, zenith
Yiddish and Hebrew enriched everyday, often informal, English, especially in American speech.
- Bagel, chutzpah, klutz, schmooze, kosher, glitch, sabbath, amen
South Asian languages (Hindi, Sanskrit, and others) arrived largely through centuries of British trade and colonial contact.
- Bungalow, jungle, shampoo, pyjamas, veranda, loot, karma, yoga, cot
East Asian languages (Japanese and Chinese) have contributed steadily, particularly around food and popular culture.
- Karaoke, tsunami, sushi, emoji, ketchup, tea, typhoon, kung fu, tofu
Indigenous American languages gave English words for foods and animals unknown in Europe before contact.
- Chocolate, tomato, avocado, canoe, hurricane, moose, raccoon, hammock
African languages contributed words connected to music, food, and culture, often via the Atlantic slave trade and Caribbean influence.
- Safari, banjo, jazz, gumbo, zombie, yam
Dutch left a strong nautical and mercantile imprint, unsurprising given the Dutch maritime dominance of past centuries.
- Yacht, cruise, skipper, cookie, landscape, boss, brandy
This is nowhere near an exhaustive catalogue. It’s the shortlist of everyday loanwords you’re actually likely to bump into on a normal Tuesday.
Is English still borrowing new words today?
Yes, constantly. The Oxford English Dictionary has formally recorded loanwords in living memory: “tarka dal” from Hindi in 1984, “quinzhee” from Slave in the same year, “popiah” from Malay in 1986, “izakaya” from Japanese in 1987, and “affogato” from Italian in 1992. Borrowing didn’t stop when the Normans left. It just changed sources.
Modern additions cluster in a few predictable places:
- Food and drink: affogato, tarka dal, izakaya, matcha
- Technology and internet culture: wiki, emoji, selfie
- Music and fashion: reggaeton, K-pop
- Everyday migration and global brands: words that travel with people and products, not just texts
Global travel, food culture, and social media are doing now what Latin scholars and Viking traders did centuries ago: bringing in words English didn’t have and didn’t need until someone showed up with the concept attached.
How do you check where a word actually comes from?
Start with the Oxford English Dictionary for a scholarly, dated etymology, or Etymonline for a faster, free lookup that’s still reliable for casual research. Most standard dictionaries also include a brief origin note worth cross-checking.
Run these three checks before trusting a claimed origin:
- Look for the earliest recorded use of the word in English.
- Check whether it arrived directly or through an intermediary language (many words took a scenic route, like “zero,” which reached English from Arabic via Italian).
- Note any shift in meaning between the source language and English, since that’s often the clearest sign a word has truly settled in.
Why loanwords matter beyond trivia night
Here’s the thing about loanwords: they’re not just fun facts for pub quizzes, but understanding why cultural context matters in language learning helps explain how loanwords fit naturally into communication. In our world at glocco®, they’re a daily decision point. When a client’s content is full of borrowed terms, we have to work out whether to keep the loanword, translate it, or swap in something the target audience will actually recognise. Get that wrong and even a technically accurate translation reads oddly to native ears.
We handle this with glossaries, cultural checks, and always looping the client in before finalising tricky terms. If your business is wrestling with terminology across languages, our guide to language localisation walks through exactly how we approach it.
Where to keep exploring the origins of English words
For deeper digging, the Wikipedia lists of English words by country or language of origin are a genuinely solid free starting point, alongside these:
- Oxford English Dictionary — the gold standard for scholarly, dated etymologies
- Etymonline — fast, free, and reliable for quick checks
- Curated loanword lists organised by historical period, useful if you want to browse by era rather than by source language
FAQ: your questions about borrowed words in English, answered
What percentage of English words are borrowed from other languages?
Estimates suggest as much as 80% of English vocabulary has foreign-language origins, with French alone accounting for close to 30% of one large 80,000-word sample, a legacy of the Norman Conquest.
What’s the difference between a loanword and a calque?
A loanword is borrowed directly, keeping roughly its original form (“café” from French). A calque translates the meaning piece by piece instead of borrowing the word itself, as with “flea market” from the French marché aux puces.
Which language has contributed the most loanwords to English?
French and Latin are usually cited as the two biggest contributors historically, though Old Norse gave English some of its most fundamental, high-frequency words, including “they” and “them.”
Is English still borrowing words today?
Yes. The Oxford English Dictionary keeps adding loanwords from languages including Japanese, Italian, and Hindi, driven by food culture, travel, and technology.
Where can I check a word’s true origin myself?
The Oxford English Dictionary and Etymonline are the two most reliable starting points, both offering dated, sourced etymologies rather than guesswork.
Sources
- Foreign-language influences in English — Wikipedia
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Loanwords — David Kemmer / Rice University (curated list)
- Englishgrammar
