A word I want to talk about is “pasta”. When the Italian word “pasta” /ˈpɑːstə/ was borrowed into Japanese, its pronunciation changed to fit the Japanese language, resulting in [pasɯta]. In Italian, the word is pronounced with a “st” sound in the middle, which is okay in Italian. But in Japanese, you can’t have two consonants like “s” and “t” together in the middle of a word. To fix this, the Japanese pronunciation adds a short vowel sound, [ɯ], between the “s” and “t” sounds, making two separate parts: “pasu” and “ta.” This change follows the Japanese rule that usually doesn’t allow two consonants together in the middle of a word. Also, the Italian “a” sound is a bit different from the Japanese “a” sound, but they are similar enough that the “a” sound in “pasta” stayed the same in Japanese. In summary, when “pasta” was borrowed into Japanese, it changed to fit the rules of the Japanese language. The addition of the [ɯ] vowel to separate the “s” and “t” sounds is a clear example of how Japanese rules affect the pronunciation of foreign words which ties into when words are borrowed from other languages.