Word sharing is ordinary and inevitable

A. It is often supposed that this heavy borrowing makes English an especially “flexible” language. But all languages borrow words, usually a lot of them. Cultural disposition makes some languages more resistant to borrowing words than others, but the space to maneuver is pretty narrow.

B. “Real” languages as well as written ones. For example, this borrowing does not require writing or extensive travel. In Australia, it is difficult to trace a family tree among the 260 languages originally spoken there because many have borrowed as much as 50 percent or more of their vocabularies from other Australian languages. This is partly because of widespread intermarriage.

C. Japanese. Japan was traditionally one of the most isolated modern cultures in the world, but over the past few decades it has inhaled countless American English words, such as beisuboru (“baseball”), T-shatsu (“T-shirt”), sukii (“ski”), fakkusu (“fax:).

D. High and low. Norman French left many diglossic doublets in English, such as pig and pork and help and aid. This is common across languages.

1. Japanese. Japanese has thousands of Chinese-derived words, including the numbers one through four, ichi, ni, san, shi. The original Japanese numbers—hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu—are used less, for example when giving children’s ages.

2. Vietnamese. The Chinese occupied Vietnam for more than a thousand years, and Vietnamese is about 30 percent Chinese in its vocabulary, including doublets such as the written hoả-xa for “train” and the spoken native xe lửa meaning “train” in casual speech.