After writing my "Antidisestablishmentarianism" post, I realized I had no idea whether this word had crept out into any other language. I suppose the possibility exists that it has; French may well have l'antidisestablishmentarianisme, German Das Antidisestablishmentarianismus (though it is more likely German would concoct a similar word out of its own prefixes and suffixes). So I cannot say for certain that antidisestablishmentarianism is unique to English.
But this leads me to ponder: what exactly qualifies as English these days? By this, I don't mean, do words like y'all and bummer belong in "good" English. I mean, how international can a word become before it stops being really part of the English tongue?
Everywhere in the world, it seems--or at least, in that part of it that speaks an Indo-European language--a telephone is a telephone, a taxi is a taxi, and a passport is a passport (give or take a few minor spelling differences and grammatical endings). Can these words really be said to be part of English, if they require no real translation for so many foreigners to understand?
Similarly, what about the myriad of scientific terms that float about on the margins of English? I recall a high school grammar book warning against excessive jargon: "Nobody would call a need for bifocals presbyopia" (except your treating optometrist, perhaps). Is presbyopia really English if a French or German optometrist would readily understand it?
So what is English? Just the core of grammar structures and unique or "unique" vocabulary we teach to EFL students? All the words that might appear in an English-language book? Where does one draw the line?
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It is true that English has a lot of words that are used in other languages, at least phonetically. But in my admittedly small sample, most of the words like that originated in "English."
The immigrants in the last half of the 19th Century brought many good words to English, which we often shortened to make a uniquely English word. Then other languages picked up from English a word that descended from German or Austrian.
And sometimes that led to trouble. I don't know if it is still extant, but I remember that France had an arm of the government that looked out for usages like "supermarket" that were creeping into French and mongrelizing it (in their opinion.)
It's actually difficult (difficile) to write a sentence in English without using a word modified from another language.
Mom
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