Re: Borrowing a word

Staving Isadora Zamora:
>How do you think a language would go about borrowing the word [xuno] when
>the language doing the borrowing has no /x/ phoneme nor any /h/
>either?  Actually, h does exist in *some*, but not most dialects, where it
>is substituted for /?/.  In any case, there is a phonotactic constraint
>that prevents the h or ? from occurring word-initially.
>
>the phonemic inventory of the language trying to borrow [xuno] (subject to
>further refinement) is:
>
>p      t       k
>p_w  t_w   k_w
>b      d      g
>b_w  d_w  g_w
>f        v     s      z
>f_w    v_w s_w  z_w
>t_S  d_Z
>m     n      N
>m_w n_w  N_w
>(r or 4)  l
>j w
>i  e  (a or A)  o  u
>
I'd be very tempted to use f_w, based on the "ha" line of the Japanese
syllabary

[ha] [hi] [p\M] [he] [ho].

In Wavoragon, a descendent of Khangaþyagon in which all consonant clusters
mutate into single consonants, [fw] -> [h].

Pete

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