Loan-words

Loan-words are words adopted by the speakers of a specific languagen in this case English, from a different language which is called source language. A loan-word also can be called borrowing. However, these two words are metaphorical because the borrowing words are not taken from a language and returned later, so they imply a proccess. 

Loan-wrods are the result of a cultural contact between two language communities. Borrowing of words can go in both directions between the languages in contact, but often there is a asymmetry, such that more words go from one side to the other. In this case the source language community has some advantage of power, prestige and/or wealth that makes the objects and ideas it brings desirable and useful to the borrowing language community.

Those who first use the word might use it at first only with speakers of the source language who know the word, but at some point the come to use the word with those to whom the word was not previously known. To thse speakers the word may sound 'foreign'. At this stage, when most speakers do not know the word and if they hear it think it is from another language, the word can be called foreign word.

The United States has a large number of loan words (if well it seems the opposite as a source language). This linguistic result was almost totally a consequence of the first period of settlement. In that early period, most of the words had been to do with new fauna and flora, or with notions deriving from contact with the Indian tribes. Now, there were many words from Spanish, French, German, Dutch and the other immigrant languages, which were increasingly becoming part of the American environment.

Here, we have a table with several examples of words and phrases come from other languages which are used in American English: 

LANGUAGE	WORDS
Indian languages	Chipmunk, hickory, how!, moccasin, moose, opossum. Papoose, pemmican, pow-wow, racoon, skunk, tomahawk, totem, wigwam.
Dutch	Boss, caboose, coleslaw, cookie, snoop.
French	Bayou, butte, caribou, cent, chowder, crevasse, gopher, levee, poker, praline, saloon.
German	And how, cookbook, delicatessen, dumb, frankfurter, hoddlum, kindergarten, nix, no way, phooey, pretzel, sauerkraut, spiel.
Italian	Capo, espresso, mafia, minestrone, pasta, pizza, spaghetti, zucchini.
Spanish	Bonanza, cafeteria, canyon, coyote, lassoo, loco, marijuan, mustang, plaza, ranch, rodeo, tacos, tornado, vamoose.
Yiddish	Gonif, kosher, mazuma, mensch, nosh, schmaltz, shmuck, schnoz, scram, shlemiel, Enjoy!, You should worry!, Get lost!, Crazy she isn’t!

Sources: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/loanwords.html
"The English language" by David Crystal.

By Estefanía Benítez Sánchez