mikelincs

The gujarati word meant something like 'in the bengali style'

jonwel

Yes, but "bungalow" is far older. And there's another point: "bungalow" is used regularly to mean a single-storey house in Britain, without any thought about its Indian origin. "Apartheid" refers to something in another country with another culture, which is why I don't think it's on the same level as "bungalow".
I also agree with Mark that "pizza" is still basically a foreign word. It doesn't matter to us but, to repeat what I said about "fiancé", if another country, who didn't know the pizza before, adopted the word because English-speakers use it, I still believe they would be adopting an Italian word.

MarkRD

It's also true that we adopt foreign words (or 'import' them) because in English there is no word for it, ie. comes from a 'foreign' culture - that would be the case of a lot of foods (pizza, polenta, sauerkraut...).

But fiancé is interesting because surely there would already have been a word for a person who is to be married? Why was 'betrothed' considered unsuitable? Which may explain why Italin uses 'mail' for 'e-mail' and not 'lettera'! The French use 'courrier' ..but then again they're French.

Pulaski

But English could manage perfectly well without those additional words. Right off the top of my head, those three examples could easily have been called flatbread (cheese and tomato flatbread if you want to be accurate), corn porridge, and sour (or fermented) cabbage, and those foreign words would have remained outside of the English language, and we'd really have lost no depth of expression. However for some peculiar reason English prefers to adopt new words like crazy - I read that English has 60% more words than French and 40% more words than German.

jonwel

Yes, polenta is known as maize meal in some countries and I suppose you could call sauercraut pickled cabbage (although it's not quite the same thing), but what could we call the pizza? "Italian flat bread with tomato and cheese topping"? Eaten in an Italianflatbreadwithtomatoandcheesetoppingeria?
Aha! Another annoyance is that Brits consider pizza to be an uncountable noun; also bruschetta.

PS Pulaski, you got there before me!

MarkRD

Interesting point .. ! But again I think foods are a category of their own as they are so steeped in the local/regional culture, and therefore tend to keep their original name. (Cheese and Tomato Flatbread Hut doesn't quite cut it... ).

But then you get horrible distortions like spaghetti bolognese, and frappuccino!

jonwel

But there it's the dish itself that's the distortion. Strangely for years (I don't know now) it was spelt à la français: spaghetti bolognaise.

MarkRD

Is it not 'we ordered two pizzas'?

Seldomseenkid

Anyone know if the Italians have a word for 'schadenfreude' or, like the British, do they use the German?

Garbatellamike

they could say something like "piacere provocato dalla sfortuna" or even "compiacimento malevolo" but methinks they would actually use schadenfreude

jonwel

Yes, you're right, but you also hear "I like pizza" and "bruschetta is an Italian starter".

Pulaski

Same applies to cake, and other divisible units, often, but not necessarily, foodstuffs, so pizza is not unusual. Or would you prefer that I say "pizzas are not unusual"?

MarkRD

Right. Funny how 'English' spaghetti is always singular though...like hair! It's considered a singular entity .. "That spaghetti was delicious!"

Pulaski

But that's a linguistic minefield even in English. Beans and peas are plural, but corn and asparagus are singular, and potatoes are plural until you mash them, then they are singular. There is no earthly way to regularize English because for every one thing you "correct" you will probably create two or three more inconsistencies.

mikelincs

Corn is yhr same both singular and plural, we say a grain of corn, and also an ear of corn or a field of corn, we never use the word 'corns' unless we are talking about hard skin on our feet.