Delightful Foreign Words

English is the greatest kleptomaniacal language.

No corner of the world has been spared from the grasping hand of English.

To get a sense of some foreign words that have crept into English, I recently purchased a dictionary of foreign words for $5 on an auction site:

From Bonbon to Cha-cha: Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases
by Andrew Delahunty.

OMG, what a delight the 411-page book has turned out to be. From Bonbon to Cha-cha features around 6,000 words, enough to keep me occupied for a long time.

The book provides examples of words that English has filched from German, French, Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Sanskrit, Italian, Urdu, Japanese, Tamil, Spanish, Latin, Yiddish, etc.

Every word comes with the meaning, pronunciation and, often, with an example of usage too.

To my great joy, the book adequately panders to my current fascination with Yiddish words. Here’s a sample of Yiddish words that are now part of my vocabulary: schlock (cheap, trashy), schmear (to flatter, grease, corrupt), schlemiel (clumsy person) and yarmulke (skull cap).

Loads of Indian Words
What pleased me a lot was to find several Indian words that have crept into English: paan, pagri, kirpan, bahu, dal, moksha, chappal, hartal, pakora, raita, raja, jati, roti, thali, lassi, jalebi, pooja, namkeen, puja, sitar, namaste, haldi and more.

One more reason to pick up this book: it was typeset by a company in Pondicherry.

If I have any complaints with the book, it’s with the shoddy binding. The pages are already coming out.