
Conlangery #59: Loan Words
Conlangery Podcast
00:00
The Origins of Borrowing Words
English borrowed a pronoun from Old Norse. It doesn't even have open pronouns like Japanese does, but we borrowed one. A huge amount of Roman vocabulary talking about food and sex comes from ancient Greek. The Bantu languages, which are spoken all over Africa practically, traveled with pastoralism basically. And it obliterated all things in its path as the technology of animal husbandry moved such that even people like several pygmy groups like the Maiaka who almost certainly are not the original Bantu stock are speaking of American culture.
Transcript
Play full episode