22 Foreign Words in Daily English Are they from your language
Vanessa: Hi, I’m Vanessa from
SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.
Do you recognize these words? Let’s talk about it.
This morning, I was sitting on my patio,
enjoying my chai latte and yogurt with granola
for breakfast, I’m a connoisseur of chai lattes
and this one was perfect. I was so gung-ho to do
the daily Sudoku that I knocked over my chai latte
and spilled it all over my pajamas. What a klutz.
If you understood all this lingo kudos to you,
if you didn’t, no worries. Today, I’m going to
help explain 22 foreign words in English. If you
speak one of these languages. Well, you’re in luck
because English takes a lot of words from other
languages and uses them in daily conversation.
These words are loaned or borrowed or directly
taken from other languages. So if there is a word
from your native language that is used in English,
well, great. You already know how to use this word
and you could use it in English.
Sometimes the meaning of words is
slightly different in English. And always the
pronunciation is more English like, but overall,
if one of these words comes from your native
language, you’re going to know how to use it.
And if none of these words comes from your native
language, I challenge you to let me know in the
comments a word from your native language that we
use in English. All right, let’s get started. The
first three words from other languages that we use
in daily conversation in English are from Spanish.
Our first one is the word patio. Notice that the
pronunciation of this word is the T changes to a D
sound pad, patio. This is very common in American
English when there is a T surrounded by vowels,
that T changes to a D, patio. A patio is an
outdoor area that’s usually with some cement or
stones. There might be a table there for eating
and it’s connected in some way with a walkway
or maybe directly connected to your house.
So we can use this word like this.
I like to eat my breakfast on the patio,
or we were sitting on the patio enjoying
the beautiful weather. Patio. Sometimes when
you’re on the patio, you hear, bzzz, it’s a
terrible sound, right? This is a mosquito. Notice
the pronunciation mosquito. Again, that final T
is changing to a D sound. Mosquito. Mosquito is
that really annoying buzzing insect that bites you
and then, well, technically probably not bites
you, but it attacks you and then you itch. Oh,
it’s really annoying. Well, we use this word often
in daily conversation because they’re everywhere
in the warm weather. So you could say, “I love to
go camping, but the mosquitoes always eat me up.”
Or you might say, “Don’t forget the bug spray
because the mosquitoes are really bad today.”
I hope mosquitoes are not bad where you live.
The third Spanish word that we use in daily
conversation in English is savvy.
Notice that this word has two V’s,
this is very unusual in English. But
it’s taken from Spanish, so there we go.
Savvy. Savvy means that you have some practical
knowledge or maybe you have an ability to make
good judgments or good choices. Let’s take a
look at these sentences. I lack mechanical savvy,
so if I have trouble with my car, I ask my dad
for help. Here we’re talking about that practical
knowledge about cars. I lack this knowledge.
I don’t have practical knowledge about cars.
I lack mechanical savvy, or I’m not savvy about
cars, so I ask my dad for help. Or you could say,
“People who are financially savvy, make good
accountants.” People who are financially savvy,
they have this practical knowledge and they
can make good judgments about finances,
about money. They are financially savvy.
All right, let’s go to our next language.
Italian. The next three words come from Italian,
but we use them in daily conversation in English.
The first word is paparazzi. Paparazzi. These are
the people who pursue celebrities or famous people
and take pictures of them while they’re walking
their children to school, or while they’re at
the grocery store. I think this would be
very annoying if you were a celebrity,
maybe it’s what you sign up for, I don’t know,
but these people are the paparazzi, so we can
use it in this way. The celebrity went out in a
disguise so that the paparazzi wouldn’t find her.
She had to go out in a disguise, like a mask
or big hat, or somehow change her appearance,
or you could say, “I’m so glad that I’m not
famous and the paparazzi don’t follow me.”
I’m so glad that the paparazzi don’t follow me.
For me, even though there are almost 3 million of
you on YouTube who are subscribed to this channel,
never once has a stranger said, “Oh, you’re
Vanessa, hi.” That has never happened before. I
think everyone is spread out around the world,
so I don’t have a problem with paparazzi. This
is very nice. But if you follow my channel
and you happen to see me, please, don’t be worried
to say hello. Yes, you can say hello to me.
I’m just a normal person. So if you see me by
accident somewhere, feel free to say hello.
But so far, this has never happened to me.
Our next Italian word in English is cartoon.
Cartoon. And this is either a drawing or a motion
animated set of drawings. A famous technique
would be Walt Disney. Walt Disney is famous
for his cartoon drawings or his cartoon style.
Or you might say, “Sometimes the news is
just too serious, so I turn on cartoons
instead.” We use this to talk about the category
of TV show that is animated. Something like this,
like a classic one is Bugs Bunny. Bugs Bunny is a
cartoon and when I was a kid, on Saturday morning,
I would watch some Bugs Bunny cartoons. Our
final Italian word today that is used in English
is latte. Latte. Notice how this word, if you
are Italian, you’ve noticed this word is sounding
English, it’s not sounding very Italian anymore,
but when you go to a coffee shop and you say,
“I’d like to order a latte,” they will know
exactly what you mean, because this is an espresso
drink with some steamed milk. Or if you don’t like
coffee like me, you might get a chai latte and
this is steamed milk with a tea mixture, a spiced
tea mixture. There’s no espresso, but it’s that
idea of steamed milk plus some caffeine stimulant.
So we can use it in these sentences. My husband
usually drinks his coffee black. This means no
milk, no sugar, but sometimes he makes a latte
or I was feeling a really sleepy, so I stopped
into the cafe and got a latte. Our next three
foreign words that are used in English are from
Turkish. The Turkish language. Our first word is
yogurt. This food has now become pretty common all
around the world. And it is a milk based food that
is mixed with some bacteria and it makes it thick
and really tasty in my opinion. So you could say,
“In the morning, I like to add some berries and
nuts to my yogurt to have a healthy breakfast,”
or “I learned how to make yogurt at home.”
This is true. I tried to make yogurt, but
Turkish students, I need your help. It’s always
too liquidy and not so thick and it took so much
effort and so much time and so much milk that I
could buy good quality yogurt at the grocery store
for much cheaper.
And it’s so much easier,
but I would love to make good quality
yogurt at home. I just need a little help.
Our next Turkish word in English is kiosk. Kiosk.
We use this word when we’re talking about a small
booth or stand where you can buy something. These
are often in a shopping mall or in an airport,
this type of big shopping type of situation. So
we could use these sentences. I went to the kiosk
to buy a ticket for the train. This might be just
a machine, or it could be a booth where someone is
working, but it’s this idea of a small area where
you are purchasing something. Or you could say, “I
used the kiosk to check-in early for my flight.”
In this situation at the airport, it’s almost
always a machine. You just put your passport in
and it prints out your ticket for you, you don’t
have to wait in line. It’s the fast way to check
in for a flight and this is an automated kiosk.
So if you go to the airport and there’s a sign
that says, “Use the kiosk for fast check-in,”
now you know what that is. And even if you
are not Turkish, you know what this word is.
I think I might have said that there were
three Turkish words. Actually, there is just
two in this lesson, so let’s go on to our next
language. The next three words come from French.
The first word is genre. Genre. This pronunciation
is very English, but that’s how we say it, genre,
and it means the style of literature or movie
or film or music. There might be a horror film,
there might be a mystery film or a romantic
film. These are the different categories or
the different genres of film. So for me, my
favorite genre of literature is historical
fiction. This is the category, or in my opinion,
the romantic film genre is usually pretty cheesy.
This means stereotypical, maybe not so interesting
in my opinion, but everyone has their own opinion.
Our next French word that we use in English is a
big one. Entrepreneur. I get a lot of questions
asking, “Vanessa, how can I pronounce this word?”
And even though I broke down this word in another
English lesson that I made called 106 Difficult
Words in English, you can watch it up here.
I will give you a little sneak preview. Let’s
break down this word. Entrepreneur, entrepreneur,
entrepreneur, entrepreneur. And this means
someone who has their own business, who works
for themselves. So for me, I don’t like having
a boss, so I decided to become an entrepreneur.
Or you might say, “With the internet, it’s
easy to become an entrepreneur. You could
do a craft, you could paint something and sell it
online. Boom, you are an entrepreneur. You have
your own business.” Our next French word that we
use in English is connoisseur. Notice the English
pronunciation here, connoisseur, connoisseur.
And it means someone who can judge
something based on an expert taste. They are
an expert and they know a lot about a field.
So a common way to use this is to talk
about a wine connoisseur. So we might say,
“The wine connoisseur ordered the
most expensive wine on the menu.”
Okay, they want the highest quality because they
can tell the difference. For me, if I drink a $15
bottle of wine compared to a $200 bottle of wine,
I probably don’t know the difference because I
am not a wine connoisseur. But if you are a wine
connoisseur, you probably can tell the difference.
But instead of being a wine connoisseur, we might
say, “I am a connoisseur for fresh water.” This
seems very strange, but it’s true. Let me tell
you a little story. Whenever I go on vacation
the one thing that I usually miss the most
about home is really fresh, clear tasting water.
It’s totally safe to drink tap water in the
U.S., tap water just comes from the sink.
Usually, totally fine to drink that,
but I really have a refined taste
for fresh water. And when we lived in our old
apartment, I would walk to the grocery store
three or four times a week with big glass
jars and I would refill those jars with
some fresh filtered water. The water was from a
tap at the grocery store. They sold this really
cheaply and it was fresh and I could fill up my
containers and take them home. And this is what we
drank for several years until we had children and
then we bought a filter for under our sink that’s
reverse osmosis, it’s really fancy. And this is
something that is important to me. I love to drink
fresh, clean, filtered water, and I can really
taste the difference. If I don’t have this type
of water for one week, I can really taste
the difference in my body and in my mouth.
So we might say, “I am a fresh water connoisseur.”
All right, our next two foreign words used in
English are from Chinese. And the first one is
ketchup. Ketchup. You might know ketchup, this is
a sauce with tomatoes and the stereotype is that
we dip some French fries in ketchup, but this word
originated in Chinese, I actually listened to a
interesting podcast about the origin of ketchup.
Seems very strange to be a podcast topic. But if
you’re interested, I highly recommend Googling
the origin of ketchup. In fact, the first ketchup
had no tomatoes. Ooh, very interesting. All right,
so we can use this word like this. I watched in
horror as my friend covered her expensive steak
in ketchup. Oh no. Or you could say, “I
like to dip my french fries in ketchup
and mustard.” Very common thing. Our next Chinese
word that’s used in daily conversation in English
is one that you actually heard at the beginning
of this lesson and that is a fun one, gung-ho.
Gung-ho. In English, this means that you
are really enthusiastic and excited about
something. So we could say, “My very organized
friend was gung-ho about organizing my closet.”
So organizing my closet is not something that
is important to me, but my friend loves to
be organized. So when she saw my closet, she
said, “Oh, I really want to organize this. Oh,
please, can I organize your closet? This looks so
great. What a good project.” She is gung-ho about
organizing my closet. But we can also use this in
a negative sense. This is true for me. I was not
gung-ho about preparing my taxes and filing all
of the documents at the beginning of this year. I
was not gung-ho. I was not enthusiastic. I was not
eager or excited. I was not gung-ho. Our next two
foreign words that are used in English are from
Japanese. The first one is Sudoku. Maybe you have
done one of these types of puzzles before. They’re
logic number type puzzles. And we might say that,
“On a long flight, it’s nice to do Sudoku.”
You can bring a little booklet. Maybe you
could even do it on your phone and
you can keep your mind active in this
simple but effective way, by doing Sudoku. Some
people even say that doing Sudoku puzzles are a
good way to keep your brain active and healthy. So
as we get older, it’s good to do little tasks like
this in order to keep our mind active. The next
Japanese word that we use in English is tycoon.
Notice this is not typhoon. Typhoon is a type of
storm, but a tycoon is a wealthy, powerful person.
So you might say that Elon Musk has become a
tycoon in the space industry. This was something
that 50 years ago might have been shocking that
an individual could become a tycoon in space,
in the space industry, but that’s what’s happened.
He is a tycoon, a wealthy, powerful person in
that industry. Or you could say, “That the oil
tycoon used his money to help other people.”
Maybe he started a charity or he donated some
money, but this is someone who’s wealthy and
powerful in the oil industry. The oil tycoon. The
next two foreign words that are commonly used in
English are from Hindi or Urdu. The first one is
loot. Loot. This is some kind of goods or item,
usually it’s personal property that’s taken by an
enemy. We can use this in a more serious sense or
we can use this in a lighthearted way. But in the
serious sense, we could say that the soldiers took
some loot when they invaded the city. So they took
some private property when they invaded the city.
But in a lighthearted way, we might say that, “On
Halloween, I looted my son’s Halloween candy.”
So in this case, I am invading my son’s Halloween
candy and I’m stealing some maybe when he’s
sleeping or something like that. But we use this
to talk about taking someone else’s thing. But in
this situation, it’s a joke, it’s lighthearted.
I took my son’s Halloween loot. That’s a noun,
or as a verb, I looted my son’s Halloween
candy. The next word is pajamas. Pajamas
are clothes that are comfortable and you wear
them at night or lounging around the house.
So you might say, “Since the pandemic began, we
all have been wearing pajamas much more often.”
Or you can say, “I was so tired that I forgot
to put on my pajamas before falling asleep.” In
English, we sometimes reduce the word pajamas to
PJ’s. So for me, that’s what I say. I say, “I’m
going to put on my PJ’s.” And sometimes for little
kids, we say jammies, this is only in reference to
clothes that little babies wear to bed, or maybe
little kids wear to bed. We might say, “It’s
time to take off your jammies and put on your
normal clothes.” For me, this isn’t a word that
I use, but I know a lot of parents use the word
jammies. So it is pretty common in the U.S.
The next two foreign words that are
commonly used in English are from
Yiddish. Yiddish. And the first one is glitch.
Glitch. The word glitch is a sudden, but temporary
problem or malfunction in some type of machine.
So we might say, “My computer had a glitch and it
suddenly shut down.” Well, maybe the next time you
turn on your computer, it’s going to work fine.
And you’re going to wonder what happened. Oh,
no, is that going to happen again? But it was
just a temporary malfunction in your computer.
Or we could say, “Because of the website glitch,
I was able to receive a special discount.” In
fact, this was true for me. There was some strange
website glitch when I was booking our wedding
location when my husband and I got married.
They were changing their website to
a new format and when I called them,
they said one price and then when I looked on the
website, it said another price that was double.
But when I asked them, which is the correct price,
they said, “Well, if we told you the cheaper
price, then that’s the price.” So even though the
website showed a higher price, because there was
this glitch, as they were updating their website,
we got to have that wedding location for half the
price. So this was a glitch that worked out in our
favor. The next Yiddish word is klutz. I used this
word earlier in my story at the beginning of
this lesson. A klutz is a clumsy person who is
tripping all the time. So we might say, “My friend
is such a klutz. She falls up the stairs.” This
takes a special type of skill to fall up the
stairs instead of falling down the stairs.
Or we could say, “The waiter was such a klutz
and dropped all of the drinks on my lap.”
Not a good situation. So the waiter was clumsy and
tripped and spilled all of the drinks on my lap.
This is never a positive thing, it’s always
used in a negative way. The next foreign word
that we use in English comes from Portuguese. And
it’s the word lingo. Lingo. Lingo is a specific
type of vocabulary that different fields use.
So for example, in the English learning field,
we often use words like the past perfect tense
or phrasal verbs. And if you’re learning English,
maybe you’re familiar with that type of lingo.
But if you an American on the street, “Tell
me about the past perfect tense,” or, “Oh, you
used a nice phrasal verb.” They’ll probably say,
“What?” Because they’re not familiar with that
type of lingo in the field of learning English as
a second language. So maybe your field at work has
a similar type of lingo. If you’re an engineer who
works on, for example, on engines, car engines,
well, you have specific types of vocabulary that
you use in that field and other people are
not really going to understand it easily.
So we might say, “Once I learned some mechanical
lingo, I was able to describe my car problem to
the mechanic.” This is the specific vocabulary
about cars. And if you would like to increase
your mechanical lingo about cars, I made this
video up here about 100 car vocabulary words.
These are words that are used in everyday
English. They’re not super technical,
but if you need to describe a problem about your
car, or you just want to learn more vocabulary,
I highly recommend checking it out. Another way
we can use the word lingo is to give some advice.
We might say it’s best to avoid lingo
when talking to people outside your field.
So if you are a professional skier, for
example, or you’re just really into skiing,
there’s probably some specific lingo about the
skis, the poles, the movements, the different
terms related to skiing. And for me, I have never
been skiing on snow, so I know nothing about this.
If you told me about skiing in a very
technical way, my eyes would glaze over
and I would probably be lost very quickly in
that conversation because I’m not familiar
with the lingo in that sphere or in that field.
Our final two words from a foreign language that
are used in English come from Greek. This ancient
language, Greek. The first word is anonymous.
This is a nice long word, but you can pronounce
it nice and clearly with me, anonymous, anonymous.
And this means that we don’t know who did it. It’s
unknown. So you might say, “The poem is famous,
but the author is anonymous.” We don’t know
who said it or who wrote it. Or you could say,
“An anonymous person left a nice note on my car.”
An anonymous person, so it’s an unknown person.
I don’t know who it is, but they wrote a note
and put it on my car. An anonymous person.
The final word in this lesson and our second
word that is taken from the Greek language and
used often in English is kudos. Kudos. Kudos is a
praise or achievement for doing well. So we might
say, “My boss gave me kudos for my presentation.”
He’s not physically giving me something, but he
says, “Great work. I’m so glad that you organized
this. It was very clear. That was really helpful.”
He is praising you for your presentation.
He is giving you kudos. We sometimes use the
word kudos directly in exchange with the word
congratulations. So we might say, “Kudos to the
team that won the championship. Congratulations
to the team that won the championship,” or,
“Kudos to the team that won the championship.”
So how did you do? Did you know these 22
common foreign words that are used in English?
Please don’t let this lingo intimidate you.
With practice and a gung-ho attitude,
you will feel less like a klutz
and more like a linguistically savvy genius,
worthy of all the kudos. I hope that this lesson
was useful to you. If I missed your language, let
me know in the comments a word in English that is
from your language. I would love to learn more
and we can learn from each other. Well, thank
you so much for learning English with me, and
I’ll see you again next Friday for a new lesson
here on my YouTube channel. Bye. The next step is
to download my free ebook, Five Steps to Becoming
A Confident English Speaker. You’ll learn what
you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
for more free lessons. Thanks so much. Bye.