refimprove date October 2007 A Wanderwort plural Wanderw rter , German language German for wandering word is a word that was spread among numerous languages and cultures, usually in connection with trade, so that it has become very difficult to establish its original etymology, or even its original language. The separation of wanderw rter from loanwords is not unambiguously possible, and they may be considered a special class of loanwords. Examples Typical examples of wanderw rter are sugar , ginger , copper , silver , cumin , mint herb mint , and wine , some of which can be traced back to Bronze Age trade. Tea, with its maritime variant tea and Eurasian continental variant chai both variants have entered English , is a very illustrative example whose spread occurred very late in history tea is from Hokkien , specifically Amoy dialect Amoy , from the Fujianese port of Xiamen , hence maritime, while cha whence chai is used in Cantonese and Mandarin. See Tea Etymology and cognates in other languages Tea etymology and cognates for further details. Another interesting example is orange word orange , which originated in a Dravidian language likely Telugu language Telugu or Malayalam language Malayalam , and whose likely path to English included, in order, Sanskrit, Persian, possibly Armenian, Arabic, Late Latin, Italian, and Old French. See Orange word Etymology Orange etymology for further details. Also noteworthy is the word arslan lion of Turkic origin, whose variants are now widely distributed from Hungarian, Russian, Manchu to Persian, although merely serving as personal names in some languages used as Aslan in the English novel series The Chronicles of Narnia . Some ancient loanwords are connected with the spread of writing system s, an example would be Sumerian language ... words and phrases ling stub ar br Wanderwort da Vandreord de Wanderwort he la Wanderwort nl Zwerfwoord sv Vandringsord ... more details
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