INTRO: VOA's Wordmasters Rosanne Skirble and Avi Arditti talk to the author of a new book that gives a country-by-country tour of words that have shaped the English language.

RS: If you speak English, then you know at least a little bit from more than one-hundred languages around the world.

AA: That's what got Allan Metcalf interested in writing "The World in So Many Words." Allan Metcalf is a professor of English at MacMurray College in Illinois. He is also executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, a scholarly group that studies American English.

RS: Each of the two-hundred essays in his book is based on a word imported into English from a different language. For instance, touring the globe, we get "pampered" by the Dutch, attend "kindergarten" in Germany, take a "siesta" in Spain, learn to "tango" from the Ibibio of Nigeria. And, we end up in "paradise" courtesy of the Persian language.

AA: Allan Metcalf says deciding which word to choose for each language wasn't always easy.

TAPE CUT ONE: ALLAN METCALF/SKIRBLE

METCALF: "The real challenge came from languages like French and Latin which have provided about one quarter each of the entire vocabulary of English. So, even just to list all the words from French and Latin would take a book thicker than this one."

RS: "Give us an example, would you?"

METCALF: "For French, I had 'reason' and 'fashion' thinking that the French would appreciate their 'superiority' in those areas.

And, I didn't spend a whole lot of time discussing 'reason' and fashion because those words are so well known. I did give Descartes, as an example of the use of 'reason,' the 'Discourse of Reason.,' but (also) mentioning that we have had 'reason' from French in English since 1225, and fashion we've had since the year 1300."

AA: Allan Metcalf says one of the most amazing stories in "The World in So Many Words" is how a bird in Antarctica got its name. According to his research, the naming process started on an island off Newfoundland visited by Welsh sailors.

TAPE CUT TWO: ALAN METCALF/SKIRBLE

METCALF: "'Pen' means 'head' and 'guin' means 'white.' So 'penguin' means white head. And, this is even more a mystery because a penguin is mostly black. What happened was there's an island off of Newfoundland and British sailors back in the 1500s called the island and the birds on it 'penguin' or 'white head.' Now that particular kind of bird, that kind of penguin, has become extinct. But, then when speakers of English got as far as the South Pole they had this name 'penguin' and somebody must have thought that the bird they saw near the South Pole was the same kind of thing as the bird they had called a penguin."

RS: "It's fascinating that these words travel so much. I guess that as people travel, they take their words with them."

METCALF: "And then they adapt the words to different circumstances or perhaps what you can say is that (the word) gets misunderstood."

RS: Take the word "bizarre," B-I-Z-A-R-R-E, meaning "strange" in English.

AA: Allan Metcalf says what started as a Basque word for "beard" has sprouted into different meanings to different speakers. And it's not too bizarre to imagine these speakers all converging on a European street.

TAPE: CUT THREE — METCALF

"So, somebody hears a person in Basque saying 'bizarre.' Somebody speaking Spanish says that must mean somebody who is handsome. Then the French person hears it and says, it must mean somebody who is a warrior. Then the English speaker hears it, and says it must mean somebody who is weird looking. So they hear the word and mistranslate it, but then it becomes the meaning of the word in a new language."

AA: Allan Metcalf's new book is called "The World in So Many Words." It is published by Houghton Mifflin.

RS: If you have a "yen" —

AA: In other words, a craving, to use the meaning of yen that comes to English from Cantonese.

RS: — if you have a yen to know more about American English, address your questions via e-mail to word@voa.gov or write to us at VOA Wordmaster, Washington DC 20547 USA.

AA: With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

词汇点津：

今天的词汇大师是"The World in So Many Words"的作家Allan Metcalf，他也是美国伊利诺伊州麦克姆瑞学院的学者，美国方言协会的执行秘书。在这本书中，Allan阐述了很多英语词汇来自外语的事实，并从每种外语中精选两个进入英语的词汇进行详细讲解，比如：

pampered 饮食过多，纵容，来自荷兰语

kindergarten 幼儿园，来自德语

siesta 午睡，来自西班牙语

tango 探戈舞，来自尼日利亚的伊比比奥语

paradise 天堂，来自波斯语

yen=craving，渴望，来自中国广东话

碰到法语和拉丁语，Allan就犯了愁，因为将近四分之一的英语词汇都来自这两种语言。经过细心挑选，他选择了reason和fashion，它们本是法语词汇，分别于1225和1300，进入英语。

Allan还向我们详细讲述了penguin企鹅这个词汇，“Pen”代表“head”，“guin”代表“white”。你可能想说，企鹅的头根本不是白的啊！本来penguin是命名纽芬兰的一种鸟类，很形象，结果后来这种动物灭绝了，而英国水手在南极附近发现一种鸟极为类似，就取名penguin，这算是个美丽的误会吧……

还有一个词汇bizarre，在巴斯克语中代表beard胡子，在西班牙语中是handsome的意思，在法语中是warrior，而在英语中就变成了weird looking。