culcan

The French tried to legislate against English words and phrases entering theur language, for example "le weekend", "le Parking", they introduced a limit on airtime of AngloAmerican songs, they failed.

Shakespeare is credited with introducing around 3000 new words in his works, about 2000 have survived into current usage,

It still goes on, radar, laser, scuba, are all examples of new words. If a language cannot create new words for new concepts it will simple borrow from other more vibrant languages. By no stretch of imagination would I ever describe Thai as a vibrant progressive language, I see elswhere in ThaiVisa they say Thais read on average 93 minutes a day, I would not count comics as reading

I'm not doubting for a moment your fact about Shakespeare but do you have a source for it. What I'd really like to see is a list of them. You've really piqued my curiosity.

Bill Bryson's "the mother tongue" states that he coined 2000 words and gave us countless phrases such as: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, flesh and blood, foul play, budge an inch, play fast and loose, to be in a pickle, the milk of human kindness, to eat someone out of house and home, hot-blooded, blinking idiot, green-eyed monster, foregone conclusion, the world's mine oyster.

Its interesting that the three new words you selected are all acronyms. This seems to be common thread in development of modern new words. As technology develops we are using acronyms more an more.

laser

origin:

1955–60; l (ightwave) a (mplification by) s (timulated) e (mission of) r (adiation)

radar

origin:

1940–45, Americanism ; ra (dio) d (etecting) a (nd) r (anging)

scuba

origin:

1950–55; s (elf)- c (ontained) u (nderwater) b (reathing) a (pparatus)

Here's another one.

nimby (not in my back yard)

and then of course there's the famous yuppie of my youth.

Time and time and time again I see articles about Thailand and there one emotion that keeps recurring.

Pity.

I pity their parochial outlook which sometimes extends to xenophobia.

After five years in Thailand I've been in Vietnam for five years. The thirst for knowledge here is so refreshing.