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Comment by Baeocystin | Hacker News Reader

>because it is the lingua franca of the world now

One of the characteristics I love about English the most is the wanton, shameless adoption of not just words but entire phrases into the lexicon. 'Frankish Tongue', nah lingua franca it is. 'long time no see' is another favorite example. Ungrammatical in English, direct word-for-word translation from Mandarin? Sure, come on in, the water's fine. No one bats an eye.

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Almost all languages have lots of borrowing. And we have German, where instead of borrowing, they make up words from other words, having some nice things such as:

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften

There is no linguistic difference between German and English in this respect, only a difference in spelling rules. English usually puts spaces between compounds, German doesn't. If English had the same spelling rules, that "word" would be "legalprotectioninsurancecompanies" rather than "legal protection insurance companies".

There is this fashion to spell it "legal-protection-insurance-companies".

No, English isn't the weird one, French is. All languages except for French just adopt phrases from other languages. But for French they couldn't just use "computer" or "PC", like pretty much every other language out there. They had to invent their own word: l'ordinateur, if I remember correctly. And they do this with every foreign word.

French certainly does take it to extremes. I get the feeling (I don't live where French is spoken often, so I mostly interact with it online, so I could be mistaken) that most people ignore what the Académie Française has to say on the matter, though.

Not all French equivalent words take on: Ordinateur is used, true, but not courriel (for email) or planche à roulette (skateboard), for example

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