Re: Borrowing Words

In a message dated 9/26/2003 7:56:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
sdrost@GRAEBEL.COM writes:


>How does one borrow words from another language when that word doesn't fit
>the phonology or has illegal consonant clusters in the target language?

Sometimes words are borrowed with the illegal clusters intact, thus changing
the rules of what's legal in the borrowing language.

When I first learned the word "sphere" as a child,  I was annoyed by it,
because I felt strongly that words beginning with /sf/ just aren't allowed.  But
someone let the word into the English language anyway.

I seem to recall reading that Finnish did not allow word-initial voiced
stops, but that these have now been introduced by borrowing.

Doug

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