🔥 Featured Questions
🗂️ Categories:EntertainmentBooksBeauty & SkincareFood & DrinkTech & AIRelationshipsLifestyle & TrendsMoney & FinanceSports
The most-used foreign words and phrases in English — which one crossed over best?
English has quietly borrowed from everywhere — a Chinese greeting from a kids' show, a Spanish farewell from an action movie, a Sanskrit greeting from yoga class, a Japanese word for singing badly into a microphone. Which loanword do you think earned its spot in everyday English the most?
🗳️ 13 votes so far🏆 Leading: "Hasta la vista, baby" — a Spanish goodbye turned action-movie catchphrase
"Hasta la vista" is just ordinary Spanish for "see you later," the kind of casual goodbye millions of Spanish speakers use every day. But when Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 delivered "Hasta la vista, baby" before blowing up a cyborg in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the phrase exploded into English pop culture as a tough-guy exit line. It's been quoted, parodied, and referenced in everything from sitcoms to sports commentary ever since, arguably doing more to spread the phrase into English than any Spanish class ever did — even though most people who say it have no idea it just means "see you later." (38%)🥈 "Namaste" — a yoga-class staple with Sanskrit roots
Namaste is a Sanskrit/Hindi greeting roughly meaning "I bow to you," traditionally said with hands pressed together at the chest. It became a fixture of English vocabulary as yoga spread through the West starting in the 1960s and 70s, with instructors closing nearly every class with the word and gesture. It got an unexpected second wave of attention in 2020, when world leaders — including Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, and Prince Charles — started greeting each other with a namaste-style bow instead of handshakes during COVID-19, turning a yoga-studio sign-off into a moment of actual diplomatic protocol. (23%)🥉 "Karaoke" — a Japanese invention that became an English noun
Karaoke comes from Japanese "kara" (empty) and "oke" (short for okesutora, orchestra) — literally "empty orchestra," describing a backing track with no vocals. Invented in Japan in the early 1970s, the word and the activity spread worldwide and were fully absorbed into English as an ordinary noun, no translation needed. Its biggest English-language pop-culture moment came in Lost in Translation (2003), where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson's characters bond over a boozy karaoke night in Tokyo — a scene now as associated with the word as any dictionary definition. (23%)🌍 🇨🇳 China
"Hasta la vista" is just ordinary Spanish for "see you later," the kind of casual goodbye millions of Spanish speakers use every day. But when Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 delivered "Hasta la vista, baby" before blowing up a cyborg in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the phrase exploded into English pop culture as a tough-guy exit line. It's been quoted, parodied, and referenced in everything from sitcoms to sports commentary ever since, arguably doing more to spread the phrase into English than any Spanish class ever did — even though most people who say it have no idea it just means "see you later." (38%)🥈 "Namaste" — a yoga-class staple with Sanskrit roots
Namaste is a Sanskrit/Hindi greeting roughly meaning "I bow to you," traditionally said with hands pressed together at the chest. It became a fixture of English vocabulary as yoga spread through the West starting in the 1960s and 70s, with instructors closing nearly every class with the word and gesture. It got an unexpected second wave of attention in 2020, when world leaders — including Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, and Prince Charles — started greeting each other with a namaste-style bow instead of handshakes during COVID-19, turning a yoga-studio sign-off into a moment of actual diplomatic protocol. (23%)🥉 "Karaoke" — a Japanese invention that became an English noun
Karaoke comes from Japanese "kara" (empty) and "oke" (short for okesutora, orchestra) — literally "empty orchestra," describing a backing track with no vocals. Invented in Japan in the early 1970s, the word and the activity spread worldwide and were fully absorbed into English as an ordinary noun, no translation needed. Its biggest English-language pop-culture moment came in Lost in Translation (2003), where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson's characters bond over a boozy karaoke night in Tokyo — a scene now as associated with the word as any dictionary definition. (23%)🌍 🇨🇳 China
Poll as Guest Infographics
From around the web
Similar to hewsay's "The most-used foreign words and phrases in English — which one crossed over best?"
Quoted & linked with attribution — not a hewsay user post.
Why are foreign phrases used in English (like déjà vu)? For example, "déjà vu" (French for "already seen") describes a specific psychological phenomenon that doesn't have a direct English counterpart. This is particularly true for terms from languages that have rich vocabulari...
quora.com · Quora
View original Why are foreign phrases, for example "raison d'être", used rather than their English translations? Why some phrases like raison d'être continue to be used in their original French form (rather than in an anglicized form or as a translation) can be traced to their typical users...
quora.com · Quora
View original Guy and gal says sorry
Difficult?
🗳️ 13 votes so far🏆 Leading: Guy says sorry all the time (38%)🥈 Why should gals say sorry when they are right all the time? (31%)🥉 Gals says sorry all the time (23%)🌍 🇨🇳 China, 🇭🇰 Hong Kong, 🇭🇹 Haiti
Poll as Guest Infographics
From around the web
Similar to hewsay's "Guy and gal says sorry"
Quoted & linked with attribution — not a hewsay user post.
What does it mean when a guy says "And I'm sorry if I lead you on. Did I? I don't know because I'm still figuring things out too."?
quora.com · Quora
View original We've been texting for quite a bit but she seems to say “sorry” a lot in her messages; like sorry for taking so long to text back, sorry for not ...Read more
reddit.com · Reddit
View original