Re: phonology of borrowed words

From: "Nik Taylor" <yonjuuni@...>
> Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> > 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.
>
> 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.  :-)
I've heard "harry karry" before too (more like [hEri"kEri] maybe?).

And then we get things like "hors d'oeuvres" pronounced with "d'oeurves" (that
metathesis is not native to French, is it?)

Then there's just odd cases like "buckaroo" from Spanish "vaquero" (where's that
stress shift come from? especially if we're supposed to have penultimating
tendencies?)

    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/

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