Re: phonology of borrowed words

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> English speaking people tend to do something similar, but often borrow words
> using a "foreignese" pronunciation, i.e. they use features (like penultimate
> stress or ultimate stress) which are not common in English, but that English
> speakers think apply automatically to words in foreign languages, even if it's
> incorrect.
Actually, we have now borrowed so many words with penultimate stress
that it has become the default stress for newly encountered words: when my
daughter (15) is reading out loud and runs into a word she does not know,
it reliably gets penultimate stress unless the pressure of analogy is
very strong: "unplinkable" would get stressed on the antepenult, e.g.

> Older generations have borrowed words "the French way" (private joke for Dutch
> speakers ;))) ).
The joke, or at least *a* joke, works in English too.  This is just
one of many idioms involving either "French" or "Dutch"; of the former,
"French leave" (leaving without saying goodbye), "French letter"
(obs., capote anglais), "French kiss" come to mind immediately, and
there are certainly many more.


> Borrowing is a complex feature, as much linguistic as it is social, so purely
> phonetic considerations cannot always explain why some word is borrowed in some
> way or another.
Amen.  English is particularly full of words borrowed more than once,
the ultimate example of which is dish/disk/discus/desk/dais, all
ultimately from Latin DISCUS.

--
[W]hen I wrote it I was more than a little              John Cowan
febrile with foodpoisoning from an antique carrot       jcowan@reutershealth.com
that I foolishly ate out of an illjudged faith          www.ccil.org/~cowan
in the benignancy of vegetables.  --And Rosta           www.reutershealth.com

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