Re: Borrowing a word

On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:06:37 -0400, Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>
wrote:

>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.
Probably a sound that shares some features with [x] -- a voiceless velar
(e.g. stop, as in English pronunciations of names like Khrushchev or
Khachaturian), or a voiceless fricative (like the /f/ in English "laugh",
which originally must have been some kind of velar sound). Since your
language has both /f/ and /s/, probably /f/ would be a better match, since
/s/ is a sibilant fricative. If your /k/ is unaspirated, it probably isn't
as good a match as English /k/.