Oh, China has contributed a fiar amount to English, particularly to the technical jargon of Paleontology...lots of stuff going on these days with Chinese feathered dinosaurs.
Korea, to a much lesser extent...Tae Kwon Do is actually Korean in origin.
There are plenty of Hindu religious terms that have made it into English -- "karma" is probably the most obvious. (At least, I *think* that comes from Hindi -- I don't know for sure.)
If there are languages that haven't contributed to English, I'd lay my money on Africa. The African languages are often much further away from English linguistically, I believe, and historically the US (where much of the recent evolution of English has happened) hasn't paid much attention to the whole continent...
Ah, a useful clue! Of course, we'd also have to steer away from the parts of the continent that the British paid attention to during the past couple of centuries. I'm guessing we skip the coastal areas?
And your suggestion has sparked another idea -- how about South America? Are there any populations there that have not had significant contact with English speakers? Or have the native languages there contributed to English indirectly by first giving words to Spanish and Portugese which in turn passed then along?
Re: I got a group.. maybe
Korea, to a much lesser extent...Tae Kwon Do is actually Korean in origin.
Don't know about Hindi, however.
Re: I got a group.. maybe
If there are languages that haven't contributed to English, I'd lay my money on Africa. The African languages are often much further away from English linguistically, I believe, and historically the US (where much of the recent evolution of English has happened) hasn't paid much attention to the whole continent...
Re: I got a group.. maybe
And your suggestion has sparked another idea -- how about South America? Are there any populations there that have not had significant contact with English speakers? Or have the native languages there contributed to English indirectly by first giving words to Spanish and Portugese which in turn passed then along?