Y06W30RC Words on the Move

This week you are exploring how words travel between languages and sometimes change meaning along the way. As you read, you will practise explaining examples, working out meaning from context clues, and thinking about why language changes over time. Pay attention to the examples in each section — they are doing the work of making the big ideas concrete and easy to follow.

Informative — Feature article

A feature article is a piece of writing that explores a topic in depth, going beyond a simple news report to explain, investigate, or reveal something interesting about the world. Writers use this form to inform readers in an engaging way — drawing them in with a strong opening and guiding them through ideas using clear sections and specific examples. You can expect a mix of facts, real-world examples, and explanations organised under subheadings that signal what each section covers. The tone is usually curious and lively rather than dry or formal. As a reader, your job is to follow the ideas as they build from one section to the next, using the examples to anchor your understanding of each new point.

Before You Read

  • Scan the subheadings before you begin reading — they map the journey the article takes and give you a sense of how the topic develops from one section to the next.
  • Think about everyday words that feel completely familiar but come from somewhere else — most people have noticed that English contains words that sound like they belong to a different language entirely. That curiosity is exactly what this article builds on.
  • The article moves from broad ideas to specific examples as it progresses — expect the early sections to introduce concepts that the later sections will bring to life with concrete detail.

While You Read

  • Use the subheadings to track where you are in the article — each one signals a shift in focus, and pausing at each heading to predict what is coming next will sharpen your reading.
  • When the article introduces an example, slow down and check that you understand both what the word means now and what the article says about where it came from.
  • Look out for cause-and-effect reasoning — the article often explains not just what happened to a word but why, and those reasons are worth following carefully.
  • When you meet an unfamiliar word or name, look at the surrounding sentences for clues about meaning before moving on.

Read With Purpose

  • Notice the different reasons the article gives for why words move between languages — consider whether some reasons feel more significant than others.
  • Pay attention to the moments where a word's meaning has shifted significantly from its original use — consider what that gap reveals about how languages and cultures change over time.
  • Keep track of how the article treats the cultures that words come from — notice the attitude the writer brings to borrowing, and consider what that reveals about how language change can be respectful or careless depending on how it is acknowledged.

Now read

The feature article

~4 min read · ~658 words

Loan Words: Travelling Vocabulary

What Did You Say?

You probably say the word “tsunami” without thinking twice about where it came from. Or “safari.” Or “yoga.” Or even “kangaroo.” Each of these words started its life in a completely different language before English borrowed them — and in some cases, transformed them into something slightly new along the way.

Words that move from one language into another are called ‘loan words.’ The name is a little misleading, because they are never really paid back. Once a word is borrowed into a new language, it tends to stay.

Where Do Words Come From?

Languages have always been in contact with each other. When people trade, travel, migrate, or simply live near one another, they share ideas — and they share the words that carry those ideas. English, in particular, is an enormous borrower. It has collected vocabulary from Latin, French, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, and hundreds of other languages over many centuries.

The word “algebra” arrived from Arabic (‘al-jabr’), carried into European languages by scholars during the medieval period. “Shampoo” comes from the Hindi word ‘champo,’ meaning to massage or press, and entered English during the era of British contact with India. “Ketchup” most likely traces its journey through a Hokkien Chinese word (‘kê-tsiap’), referring to a fermented fish sauce — a far cry from the tomato variety most people recognise today.

How Meaning Shifts

Here is where things get interesting. When a word travels, it does not always bring its full meaning with it. Sometimes the new language takes only part of the original meaning. Sometimes it stretches the word to cover new ground.

Sometimes the meaning shifts so much that speakers of the source language would barely recognise the word’s new role.

The word “avatar” originally comes from Sanskrit, the ancient language of many South Asian texts. In Sanskrit, ‘avatara’ referred to the descent of a god to Earth in physical form. In modern English — particularly in technology and gaming — an avatar is simply a digital image that represents a person online.

The core idea of “a representation of something” has survived, but the sacred and spiritual context has been largely left behind.

‘Adaptation’ like this is not disrespectful — it is simply how living languages work. Words are practical tools, and communities reshape them to suit the needs of the moment.

Closer to Home Australian English has borrowed extensively from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, incorporating words that describe animals, plants, and places that had no name in English before European settlement. Words like ‘kangaroo’ (from the Guugu Yimithirr language), ‘wombat’ (from the Dharug language), and ‘quokka’ (from the Nyungar language) entered English because there was simply nothing else to call these creatures. They were new to English speakers, but they had been named, known, and understood by First Nations peoples for tens of thousands of years.

Place names tell similar stories. ‘Toowoomba’ is believed to derive from a Jagera word associated with reeds or swamp country. ‘Parramatta’ comes from a Darug word thought to mean “the place where eels lie down” or “the head of the waters.” These words were not borrowed casually — they were embedded in a deep knowledge of Country that long preceded the English language’s arrival on this continent.

Words Keep Moving

Language change is not a recent development. It has been happening for as long as human beings have been talking to one another. What changes is the speed.

Today, new words spread across the globe in hours rather than centuries.

‘Emoji,’ borrowed from Japanese (‘e’ meaning picture, ‘moji’ meaning character), has now been used in multiple languages around the world within just a few decades.

The next time you use a word like “sofa” (from Arabic), “robot” (from Czech), or “bungalow” (from Hindi), you are carrying a small piece of language history without even noticing. Words are not just tools for communication. They are ‘artefacts’ — objects that carry traces of the cultures, encounters, and moments that shaped them.

Check your vocabulary knowledge

loan word n.
a word taken from one language and used in another.
adaptation n.
the process of changing something to suit a new context or use.
medieval adj.
relating to the period in European history roughly from 500 to 1500 CE.
incorporated v.
included or absorbed something as part of a larger whole.
artefacts n.
objects that carry traces of the cultures or histories that created them.