]...But the English speakers tend to have a great dislike of foreign sounding words. Our language is full of words from just about every other language on the planet, but you would never be able to tell that we've borrowed so many words. Think of the poor immigrant named "Polinowski" given the innocuous, rather insipid name "Pole". But this tendency is not limited to the English-speaking world. Look at some of the English words that have been borrowed into other languages. Does anyone know any examples of this? Words kind of "nativized" when borrowed into a particular language?

I can mainly give examples from French, but a steamer is a "paquebot" (packetboat), "rosbif" is roast beef, during the Hundred Years War, the English were "les Goddons" (God damn!), "biftek" is steak, to exercise one can "faire du jogging" and if travelling overnight one can "réserver un sleeping". Anything that is abundant is "à go-go".

Despite the best intentions of the Académie Française, English words continue to be assimilated but usually intact: le weekend, le flash, le reporter, le meeting, le ferry etc.

One interesting (to my mind) borrowing is the Russian for railway station, "Vagzal" (sorry, I haven't got a cyrillic script font) which is derived from Vauxhall (gardens) in London. Quite why, I have no idea!

Christabel