The Pit Post | Loanwords

Loanwords,

or borrowed words, are words adopted from other languages and incorporated into one’s native tongue without the necessity of translation as they seem to do the wordjob quite well.  When Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs, utters the iconic line, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti,” we clearly understand him and also know that he is not completely insane.  Words are loaned or borrowed when one culture encounters another, be that meeting friendly or not.  Much of the American West and Southwest was the territory of Mexico, and thus populated by Indigenous Mexicans and other Native Americans(in the truer sense of the word), until it was ceded in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.  They were there much longer than European immigrants – settlers and pioneers – prone to claiming, more appropriately, stealing the land for themselves. So White Americans should be inviting their southern neighbors to their backyard barbecues, not chasing them over the border. 

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