I've studied Spanish (in highschool) and Japanese (for years) and while there were some new concepts (in grammar and sentence structure, mainly) they don't apply to anything but languages. And I'm not likely to try creating a language, and I've never had trouble expressing myself in the one I have.
What's the english word for 'schadenfreude'? or 'entrepreneur'?
After edit: the saying cherished by linguists in English is "'loanword' is a calque, and 'calque' is a loanword," which I find helpful for remembering which word is which.
That's a great line! I never heard it before.
Its not exactly uncommon for people to own businesses and to then employ people to run the company for them. This is pretty much how most long established public companies work.
Some governments actually try to restrict the usage of loan words and try to keep the language 'pure'. I think this is death for a language, and I'm glad English adopts new words so readily.
Someone recently told me that they thought that almost all the really interesting creative works were in English these days because English is so expressive, where many other languages have only 1 word for a thing. The language he used as a reference was Spanish, which he is fluent in. The word he used as an example was 'garbage'. He said in Spanish he had only ever used 1 word for it, but in English we have 'trash', 'junk', 'refuse', 'waste', etc, etc.
I don't know if that's really why, but it's an interesting thought.
The words 'trash', 'junk', 'refuse', 'waste' all carry different connotations. Be forewarned, my information is largely relative to Wisconsin. Other regions of the US may use the words differently.
If applied to a person: trash usually refers to someone that's disreputable in some grievous way, waste would refer to some that squandered some talent or resources. Junk wouldn't usually apply to a person but junkie means a drug addict. Applying refuse to a person would be silly, but probably be .
If applied to stuff that's thrown out: Trash is a generic term for anything that's thrown away. Waste is usually consider excess like banana peels. (waste and trash are largely interchangeable in conversation, the distinction isn't usually important) Junk would refer to material possessions that are no longer wanted like an old couch. No one would call banana peels junk. Refuse is a pretentious/higher class term for trash used by rich old ladies.
I don't believe refuse is in the common usage any more. I've never heard it used outside of Star Trek 6 and some older movies. It's meaning is similar to "trash" but it can also refer a place where trash is stored.
Most of english is this way. Words are extremely flexible and can be used in a variety of ways with many meanings. Context is extremely important. I'm not sure how other languages work, I only speak english.
In general, verbs in Spanish are way more expressive than in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_verbs