Foreign Borrowings

According to David Crystal Encyclopedia when a language takes lexemes from another language, the new items are called loanwords or borrowings. While many languages try to avoid borrowing foreign words, English seems to welcome them, as over 350 languages are recorded as the sources of its vocabulary.
Every historical event influenced English language a lot. Loanwords appeared in English even before the Anglo-Saxons arrival. There were peak periods of word borrowing activities in English.

First loan words were Celtic loans. After the adoption of Christianity Latin became the dominant language to influence English. It included in its vocabularies words like church, bishop, school, priest, etc. Viking invasion brought 2000 Scandinavian words. After the Norman invasion the size of loans were doubled. By the end of the renaissance the growth of the vocabulary, especially by Latin, doubled the lexicon again. In my previews post I was discussing the emergence of the Black English. The importation of the black slaves also brought many new words to the English lexicon like negro, African-American, black etc.
This process continued during the Middle English period in 1950s and after English became world language the borrowings showed a dramatic upturn. It was the result of regular communication with other cultures. I was watching a video clip on youtube about loanwords, where a professor was bringing some examples of such loanwords like dollar, which was a Flemish word called thaler. Alcohol is an arabic word al-kuhul, firstly it was used as medical equipment. Ketchup is an Indonesian word kecap. Here are other examples of loanwords.
Coffee (Ethiopia Ethiopian) coffee beans were first discovered in the town of Kaffa, Ethiopia.
Jaguar (Native Paraguay and Southern Brazil Guarani) a kind of big jungle cat.
Panda (Nepal Nepali) a type of rare black-and-white bear.
Penguin (Wales Welsh) an antarctic sea-bird -originally meaning 'white head'.
Robot (Czechoslovakia Czech) an intelligent machine -originally meaning 'worker'.
Sugar (Ancient India Sanskrit) -originally 'sarkara'.
Tattoo (Tahiti Tahitian) inked design forced into the skin.
Tomato (South America Aztec Nahuatl) a sweet red vegetable -originally 'tomatl'.
Zombie (Congo and Angola Kongo) dead-but-still-alive -originally the name of a snake-god.
The definitions of these words can be found in Webster’s dictiories but if you are interested in loanwords, here you can find a comprehensive list of them.