[shkkmo]

Is "salsa" an english word?

In english, "salsa" means a spicy dip made from peppers and other vegetables. In spanish, "salsa" just mean a sauce.

Loan words are a well estabished mechanism by which words enter a language from another langues. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loanword

Loanwords spread from their point of adoption into the wider language and can shift from the original meaning, just like other words.

"Kefir" has definitions in every major dictionary and is often used in contexts where all the other words are also english. That makes it pretty conclusively an English word.

[tantalor]

Just because a word is "in the dictionary" doesn't make it English.

For example, we can all agree "schadenfreude" is not an English word, but it's in the dictionary.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schadenfreude

There is no English word for "pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune". Yes, we can borrow from German; that doesn't make it suddenly become English.

[shkkmo]

> For example, we can all agree "schadenfreude" is not an English word, but it's in the dictionary.

I don't agree.

> Yes, we can borrow from German; that doesn't make it suddenly become English.

It doesn't suddenly become English. It happens gradually as more English speakers encounter the word and start using the word.

Dictionaries start adding the word as usage becomes widespread. If a borrowed word is frequently used in an English context by English speakers and is understood by English speakers and that is widespread enoythat it is listed in English dictionaries...it is pretty safe to say that the word is part of the English language.

While I do speak German, I learned the English word "schadenfruede" well before I started studying any German. Similarly, I don't speak any Russian but I know what "kefir" means. I didn't learn it from a Russian, I learned it from other English speakers in the course of speaking English about 20 years ago. In fact, I didn't even know that word originally came from Russian until very recently.

Part of why English is so hard to learn for non-native speakers is because it is full of loan words from lots if languages. Many of them you probably don't even realize originally came from other languages.