Re: joatsimeo-Loan Words

From: JoatSimeon@...
Message: 587
Date: 1999-12-15

In a message dated 12/15/99 3:21:58 PM Mountain Standard Time,
JoatSimeon@... writes:

>Another situation: IF THE LOAN WORD IS CONVERTED IN THE EXPECTED
FASHION WHEN IT IS FIRST INTRODUCED. >>


-- this generally doesn't happen. >>


-- I should have been more specific. Take an English word like "night"

These days, we pronounce it "nite". Back three or four centuries, it was
pronounced as 'n-ig-cht', roughly the way some conservative dialects (Lowland
Scots, Lallans) did until quite recently.

But if a loan-word with a sound like the original "night" were introduced
_now_, it would not go through the same process; that sound-shift is over.
(Eg., the pronunciation of a German loan-word like volkerwanderung.)

Accent does affect loan-words, but only when the sound the loan-word contains
is no longer present in the recipient language at all.