Re: imported vocabulary

[John Denker <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

> Zach Wolff wrote:
> > English borrows from other languages at a rate greater than
> > any other known modern languange.

Then in response at 01:43 AM 2/14/00 -0500, somebody wrote:

> This is an example of what I will call a "memorism", in hopes that my
> creative coinage will someday show up in Webster.  A "memorism" is a
> factoid once heard or read somewhere, which one has implanted in one's
> memory so indelibly that one continues to recite it automatically
> without taking note that it was or has become incorrect.  A "memorism"
> can also be a fact that was memorized incorrectly; or two facts that
> have become entwined and garbled.
>
> If your "memorism" ever was true, it's certainly out of date by decades
> at least.

Hey, wait a minute.

1) I think it is _true_ that English has borrowed remarkably many words
from remarkably many other languages.

2) If anybody thinks that is not true, the appropriate thing to do would be
to cite an example of another major modern language that borrows more freely.

3) At the other extreme, it is not appropriate to asperse the _process_ by
which someone supposedly remembered something.  Using words like "factoid"
and "memorism" hardly rises above name-calling.

4a) Lest I, too, be accused of spreading untraceable garbled factoids, I
refer readers to page 500 of volume 4 of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th
edition.  The article on "English language" says one of the three
characteristic features of English is "openness of vocabulary, [which]
allows English to admit words freely from other languages and to create
compounds and derivatives."

4b) Postwar Japanese has done some spectacular borrowing, but it hardly
compares.  See
   http://www-japan.mit.edu/articles/JapaneseLanguage.html
which says in part:
"Three categories of words exist in Japanese. The native Japanese words
constitute the largest category, followed by words originally borrowed from
China in earlier history, and the smallest but a rapidly growing category
of words borrowed in modern times from Western languages such as
English."  Note: The "earlier" borrowings were mainly pre-8th century.