--- title: Borrowed words from far away: Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Ukrainian and more — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Borrowed words from far away: Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Ukrainian and more», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Words travel with people, ships, trade and food; when English speakers met people from India, th --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Borrowed words from far away: Hindi, A… # Borrowed words from far away: Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Ukrainian and more Lesson 24 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/0/) — Words travel with people, ships, trade and food; when English speakers met people from India, the Arab world, China, Japan and Ukraine, they came home with new words. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/1/) — Priya's grandma in Leicester smiles: "Pyjamas, shampoo and bungalow are Hindi words, beta!" ("beta" is a loving word for a child in Hindi and Urdu), and she is right. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/2/) — Your breakfast may be full of travellers: "coffee" and "sugar" came from Arabic, "tea" from a Chinese language, and "ketchup" probably started as a Chinese fish sauce. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/3/) — Many words changed on the way, passing through several languages and sometimes changing meaning, so a word's story can be like a map of a long journey. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/4/) — When a word's past is not certain, honest experts say "probably" or "likely", and so should we. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/5/) — "Pyjamas" (leg garment), "shampoo" (first meaning press or massage) and "bungalow" (a house in the Bengal style) came from Hindi and Urdu during British rule in India. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/6/) — "Jungle" came from Hindi "jangal", wild land, and "loot" from Hindi "lūṭ", stolen goods. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/7/) — "Algebra" comes from Arabic "al-jabr", putting broken parts together, from a maths book by the scholar al-Khwarizmi in Baghdad in the 800s; his name gave us "algorithm". - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/9/) — The idea of zero came from India; Arab mathematicians passed it to Europe, and its name came from Arabic "ṣifr", empty, which also gave "cipher". - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/10/) — Many experts think "ketchup" comes from Hokkien, a Chinese language, "kê-tsiap", a fish sauce; this is likely but still argued about, and it became a tomato sauce in America in the 1800s. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/11/) — "Kowtow" comes from Chinese for "knock head", a deep bow touching the forehead to the ground; in English it now means being too eager to obey. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/13/) — "Borscht", the beetroot soup closely linked to Ukraine, reached English through Yiddish from the Slavic word "борщ"; in 2022 UNESCO listed Ukrainian borscht cooking as heritage needing urgent protection. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/14/) — "Cossack" came into English from Ukrainian "козак" (kozak) and Russian "kazak"; it probably goes back to a Turkic word for a free person; Cossacks were free warrior communities on the Ukrainian steppe, a huge grassy plain. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/15/) — From Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, came "guru" (teacher), "pundit" (learned person) and "avatar" (a god coming to earth in a body, now also your character in a game). - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/24-borrowed-words-from-far-away/16/) — From Japanese came "tsunami" (harbour wave), "emoji" (picture + character) and "karaoke" (empty orchestra). - ← previous: [Borrowed words: French, Norse and Latin](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/23-borrowed-words-french-norse-and-latin/) - next →: [Idioms taken literally](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/25-idioms-taken-literally/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)