Re: phonology of borrowed words

Nik Taylor wrote:
>Sometimes I think that borrowings are deliberately distorted.  :-)
>Like, I heard my grandfather pronounce "harakiri" like "Harry Karry"
>(something like /hIrikIri/), which seems to me to be far more
>distorted
>than can be explained by simply English phonology.  :-)
That's how we oldsters first heard it, away back during WW II. True,
there's no good explanation for it.  But the beat goes on-- I usually
hear "karaoke" pronounced as if it were "Carioca"