Is it “falafel” or “felafel”? “Pad thai” or “phad thai”? In other cases, many possible transliterations are used within English, even if the dictionary provides only one spelling. Sometimes the English spellings of these words adhere to conventionalized phonetic transliteration.Įxamples include “makimono” (Japanese: a horizontal ornamental scroll), “namaz” (Persian: Islamic prayer) and “teledu” (Malay: a Javanese skunk-like animal). However, English – and therefore spelling bees – also includes many words from languages not historically written in Latin characters. Some viewers might wonder if words like these should be included in the bee, but nobody would question their spellings. Other examples, which showed up in the 2019 national spelling bee, include “tjaele” (Swedish: frozen ground), “imbirussú” (Portuguese: a South American tree) and “geeldikkop” (Afrikaans: a disease among southern African sheep). These words usually maintain their original spellings, such as “schadenfreude” (German: pleasure derived from another’s misfortune) and “coup d’état” (French: violent overthrow of a government). Most English loanwords borrow from languages that, like English, use the Latin alphabet. Nobody would question their inclusion in the spelling bee. This is especially common in the domains of cuisine, as with “jambalaya” (from Louisiana French, originally Provençal), natural phenomena like “tsunami” (Japanese) and specialized terminology such as “fortissimo” (Italian) in music.Īlthough there is no English language academy that makes official rulings, the spellings of such loanwords are standardized, as they are frequently used in English and have been for many years. With more recent loanwords, English speakers sense their language of origin but still see them as part of English. Unless they’ve studied linguistics, most people would be surprised to learn that “skirt” entered English from Old Norse, “beef” from French and “expensive” from Latin. Many loanwords have been part of English for centuries and are not considered foreign at all. Linguists call these words “ loanwords,” which does not mean English eventually returns them. It has captured words from many languages, often for concepts not previously expressed in English. In a millennium of global expeditions and conquests, English has cast its net in diverse linguistic habitats.
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