Re: Borrowing a word

Quoting Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>:

> 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
Japanese seens to've borrowed Chinese [x] as [k]; cf Kanji from Hanzi.

Now, and don't know enough of the phonological history to rule out totally the
possibility that both phonemes were [qX] when the borrowing took place, but at
least the end result is what you're looking for.

                                                  Andreas