Subscribe to ListverseTop 10 Loanwords
- Published October 14, 2007 - 44 Comments
A loanword is a word borrowed directly from another language to express something which has no accuarate word in English. This is a list of the ten most common loanwords.
10. Ennui Pronunciation: on-wee
From French. Boredom of the soul.
9. Schadenfreude Pronunciation: shah-din-froyd-ə
From German. Taking joy in the suffering of others.
8. Wanderlust Pronunciation: vunder-loost
From German. A strong longing or desire towards wandering.
7. Sehnsucht Pronunciation: sane-zookt
From German. A self-destructive or addictive yearning for a time, place or thing that one can’t explain.
6. Saudade Pronunciation: saw-the-thə
From Portuguese. A feeling of longing for something that one is fond of, which is gone, but might return in a distant future, although deep down you know it probably wont.
5. Doppelganger Pronunciation: dopple-gang-ə
From German. The ghostly double of a living person.
4. Weltschmerz Pronunciation: velt-shmeartz
From German. The pathological suffering felt by one who has realised that physical reality can never truly satisfy the demands of the mind. A melancholy sense of anguish about the nature of being.
3. Zeitgeist Pronunciation: zight-gihst
From German. Something that captures the spirit of the era.
2. Ad Hominem Pronunciation: add om-in-im
From Latin. Replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking the person who made it, and not what he said.
1. Déjà vu Pronunciation: day-zha voo
From French. The sense of having already seen or hear something being experienced for the first time.
Contributor: JT
October 14th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Weltschmerz
*sigh*
great list JT!
October 14th, 2007 at 11:04 am
German is such a great language.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Very interesting list. And to think I just got a German in your Car cd set…lol. I will learn.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:20 am
i love german. As you (sorta) said in your writing tips list, its so much fun to say germanic words
October 14th, 2007 at 11:45 am
i remember some of these words from when i read Heidegger: the most dense reading i’ve ever done in my life..
October 14th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
I love German because no matter what is being said, it always sounds like a command. I’m not trying to be funny. That’s what it sounds like to me and I think it’s so cool…
October 14th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Yarr-Are you sure you don’t get that idea from videos of Hitler’s speeches and the like? When ordinary people speak German it may sound strange to English-speakers, but it doesnt really sound “harsh” like so many people think.
October 14th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
4: There’s a word for how I feel? I am so understood!
7: Not nostalgia?
9: Not sadism?
October 14th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Kelsi: I think I might suffer a little of #4 too.
#7 – nostalgia is not strong enough to describe Sehnsucht – it is a similar thing but to a much lesser degree
#9 – different again – sadism is the pleasure in pain – Schadenfreude is the pleasure in suffering – which may not include physical pain at all.
October 14th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
For me, as I am german, it is fun to see how close these two languages are. There are many words wich have the same origin and there are a lot loanwords in both languages. By the way: A russian friend said to me that german is considered to sound like barking in russia but at least I have never been confused with a dog so far
October 14th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
I am also German and I know some of the german words in English, but Weltschmerz, Schadenfreude, Sehnsucht were new to me.
Other examples: Hinterland, Poltergeist, Kindergarten…
October 14th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I swear I’ve seen that one about deju vu before.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
damnit dana you stole the joke i was gonna say!!!!
October 15th, 2007 at 8:15 am
evrything in german sounds cool
=> a butterfly = Schmetterling
October 15th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Jen-
I used to work at a bar that had a large German clientele. (It was actually an Irish Pub, but for some reason was full of German businessmen all the time.)
They were very nice, they tipped VERY well, and they were extremely fun to be around.
And, though they would order in heavily accented English, they would sit around and, well, yell at each other in German.
Many times I thought a fight was about to break out but then they would all start laughing and singing songs.
I just thought it was cool, that’s all.
October 15th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Yarr: Sounds like my kind of bar!
October 16th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Did I (or rather my sn) have any influence regarding this list?
If so…I am HONORED…now I will slip back into ennui…
October 16th, 2007 at 8:20 am
schadenfreude: It may well have! Enjoy the ennui – I am just sitting here hoping my doppleganger will come and finish cooking dinner for me!
October 16th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I find the pronunciation key for Schadenfreude to be rather odd.
It would be closer to shah-din-froyd-ə than
shard-in-froyd-ə.
Most people would probably pronounce “shard” in the given pronunciation like “a shard of glass,” which would sound especially odd.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:40 am
Versailles: You are right – with a non-American accent (such as mine) shard and shah-d are pronounced the same. I will modify it as your way works regardless of accent
Thanks.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
@just me: Yes, someone who agrees with me!
Must remember shcmettering… it sounds so pretty.
@jfrater: yeah, I pronounce the two sounds the smae aswell.
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:01 pm
intresting that most of them are germen. what about uber?
February 23rd, 2008 at 5:33 am
ersatz: my personal favorite loanword 2cents….
June 9th, 2008 at 8:12 am
@Amai: ‘über’, or rather ‘uber’ on keyboards without umlaut, is simply used as yet-another superlativ in an era where the old ones have been used up, I think. (super, mega, giga et.al. are sooo yesterday)
@Shawn: like ‘über’, ‘ersatz’ suffers in regard to this list that both cannot really stand alone. You’ll only have ersatz coffee, or the new über-cool album by .
Also, the list is about words having no duplicates in English.
‘Über’ simply whould translate to ‘over’ – then again, the loanword ‘uber’ takes on quite a different meaning.
But ‘Ersatz’ would simply translate to ’surrogate’, unless I’m missing a point.
However – interesting list, which I stumble upon a day after discussing German loanwords in the English language…darn, a day to late
Heading over to the amazing coincidences list…
June 15th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
I know lots of people who have Schadenfreude. They get off being mean. Unfortunately some of them are teachers. They are cruel. Administration does nothing.
Wanderlust: I have a friend who is always going somewhere (London, Little Caimen, New Zealand,Etc)
Saudade: Me. To a tee. Never knew there was a word for it.
Deja Vu: Sometimes this is so strong, I think I really found a way to go back in time. Unreal and sort of creepy. A very uncomfortable feeling.
August 9th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Sweet list, though I’m kind of suprized that touché isn’t on there.
October 2nd, 2008 at 9:13 am
You could do quite a list from Hindi: Jamboree, bungalow, khaki, khasi, jubilee, shufti.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
I live in Ireland and i have an incredible saudade for the Irish pound!
December 31st, 2008 at 3:48 pm
I never knew those words were loanwords. I loved seeing a word from Portuguese there as I am brazilian e we actually have A LOT of loanwords from English.
Just a thing: Saudade actually would be pronounced saw-tha-the and it was sound very heavy in accent, because the letter U is not actually pronounced as a W, but it’s the closest it can get.
December 31st, 2008 at 3:49 pm
*it would sound
February 6th, 2009 at 7:27 am
The German language is so abrupt and to the point. I can’t remember the exact word but the German for diarrhoea is literally translated as ‘through fall’.
Gotta love the Germans!
February 11th, 2009 at 7:56 am
@Gina (31): I’ve had German for two years at school (and I am Dutch, so that’s pretty close linguistically), and if I remember correctly, diarrhoea in German is Durchfall. The word doesn’t make much sense to me, though…
By the way, if you take that word back to its Greek roots, you get dia + rheoo, which would translate to dia = through, around and rheoo = flow, stream. So flow around. Just a ‘fun’ fact.
March 24th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
i have Sehnsucht and Saudade
March 25th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Saudade: WOW! I honestly didn’t know there was a word for that, but it’s perfect!
And, at what point does a loanword become part of a language? Because, let’s face it, half of the english language is actually made of loanwords!
March 26th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Zeitgeist:
The given pronunciation “zight-gihst”
is absolute bullshit.
The correct pronunciation is “TSight-gighst” (“ei” spoken as in “high”, “Z” => “TS”).
English speaking people will never learn it!
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:00 pm
German seems to have a lot of good words for describing concepts. They also have words for bureaucratic red tape designed to keep you form getting a reward or prize (Papierkrieg, which translates to “paper war”), a present husbands buy for their wives when they’ve done something bad (Drachenfutter, meaning “dragon feed”), and a word for weight gained from overeating because one is worried about something (Kummerspeck, or “grief bacon”).
April 9th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Ad Hominem….I finally get to see it and how it’s pronounced. Kept seeing it in lists around here, but didn’t know how to pronounce it. This was a cool list.
April 9th, 2009 at 8:50 am
@oouchan
“ad hominem”
no problem – pronounced: , “utt” as in “cut”.
“hominem” like “eminem” – you know.
Klaus
May 10th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Ok, I’m wending my way through these lists & having a ball (and neglecting my housework shamefully). I just have to comment on #6. Just as there are many accents in English (in the US, cf. Cajun vs. Boston…), there are in Portuguese. In the north of Brazil, we would say “sow-DAH-gee,” and usually “sow-DAH-gees.” There is really no English equivalent for it & I have wished for one for years. It is SUCH a great word for what it expresses!
August 19th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Very funny for me who I am german.
I didn’t new that so many german words are used by english speaking people. I only was aware of “Rucksack” and “Kindergarten”.
Even much funnier is how you obviously pronounce those words. Very strange! We pronounce them slightly different
Somebody in the beginning said, that german is beautiful language. I really have to agree, although I thought other nations are not that much into german. But to me english is the great and exciting language. I love it so much.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
@fgh: Yes, you are right. The difference between english and germany imho is the following: German has 1000 words for one thing. One word in english can mean 1000 things.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Number 10 (ennui) is great. I happen to be french, and for the exact meaning of the english “ennui”, we use the english word “spleen”… As “ennui” for us is just about the same than “boredom”.
November 10th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Am I the only one who learned the meaning of Schadenfreude from Avenue Q?
November 15th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Nope, I learned Schadenfreude from Avenue Q as well. And Ennui from Glee. :\
Sigh.