English probably borrows from other languages more than any other.
What's stopping us from just stealing these words? In Singapore for example, people will often just drop in a Malay or Cantonese word.
What's stopping us from just stealing these words? In Singapore for example, people will often just drop in a Malay or Cantonese word.
For example, something like 木枯らし (kogarashi, the first wind of winter) is extremely specific and must have been important at some point in Japanese culture, but there isn't any real need for it in English any more than there is for "zephyr" (a gentle wind from the West).
Some of these do have English equivalents, like しょうがない, which is really two words and a particle. Most people I know who speak English would just say "oh well" in a resigned tone or, more casually, "shit happens."
Good examples for English borrowing words are "nirvana" and "dharma". Both are hard to translate their meaning into English so we just go with the word itself.