Chris Roberts

English has the largest vocabulary of any language in the world. This may be because English has a magpie-like tendency to adopt words from pretty much anywhere as well as having been shaped by successive waves of invaders, bringing with them Danish, Anglo-Saxon and French words. Lost English reveals how some of those words have evolved and how others betray where the English themselves have invaded, or traded

The need for administrators in the far-flung corners of the British Empire meant that many Indian and Asian terms eventually made their way back home (ayah, dekko, mufti and veranda, qq.v., amongst others) and were absorbed into mainstream English.