As an English and Spanish speaker, there are many words that are spelt the same in English and in Spanish but the pronunciation is different and they either mean the same thing or could mean something totally different. Growing up speaking both of the languages, mainly English, I would get confused and assume that it’s the same pronunciation in Spanish and my mom would teach me the difference. For example, the word “chocolate”, spelled the same in both languages but different pronunciation. In English it’s “chak – liht” and its IPA is “tʃak – lɪt”. In Spanish it’s “choh – koh – lah – teh” and its IPA is “tʃo – ko – la – te”.

One of the words I would like to consider is “café” which was borrowed from french to English. Pronounced /ˈkæˌfeɪ/ in English, whereas in French, it’s pronounced /kafe/. The pronunciation was adapted to fit the phonemic inventory and phonotactics of English.In French the word café usually doesn’t have elongation of the /e/sound at the end however in English there’s elongation at the end of the word where it is pronounced as the diphthong /eɪ/. The vowel /a/ In the beginning of the word is also pronounced differently in English than French, the pronunciation is /a/ rather than the open vowel /a/ . However, the English phonotactic has stuck with the constant-vowel-constant- vowel rule (CVCV) which makes it easier for English speakers to adapt to using the word as well as the constant cluster /f/ followed by /eI/. Both constants In English and French are pronounced similarly and the word overall has been adapted to fit in the English phonotactic retaining its form and meaning from French (donor language ).

One word that I found that Japanese (borrowing language) borrowed from English (donor language) is milk. When milk, pronounced as /mɪlk/ was adapted to Japanese phonotactics and phonemic inventory, the pronunciation was changed to /miɾɯkɯ/. Several changes were made to adapt English phonotactics and phonemic inventory to Japanese phonotactics and phonemic inventory. In Japanese, there cannot be consonant clusters so to fix the English pronunciation, the vowel sound [ɯ] was added in between consonants. Along with that, the [l] sound was changed to an alveolar tap [ɾ], a sound kind of between “r” and “l” as Japanese doesn’t have the [l] sound. Finally, the syllable structure was changed. From one syllable, “milk”, to three syllables “mi ru ku”. This change allows native Japanese speakers to easily pronounce the word as there usually aren’t one syllable words in Japanese.

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.

A word that I found out was borrowed from one language to another is the word, Doctor. In Spanish, it is spelled the same way as in English. However, the words are pronounced quite differently because the r rolls in Spanish while in English it doesn’t. The word in English is pronounced as dak-duhr while in Spanish the pronunciation differs, it is dohk-tohr. Though the way this is said can change due to gender roles, if the word is describing a man it stays the same but if the word is describing a woman then we would use the feminine noun. It would look like Doctora and sound like dohk-tohra. The [d] is produced in a different part of the mouth. For example, when we say Doctor in Spanish our tongue touches the roof of our mouth and then slightly pushes our teeth and alveolar ridge. While in English our tongue hits the roof of our mouth and falls back down. The origins of word doctor came from the agent noun ducere which is Latin for someone who is a leader, the word was used to describe men and teachers then it transformed into a word that describes people who graduated college and eventually over time it turned into what we now know as a doctor which was used as as a way to show respect to any professionals who have PhDs.

A word that has been borrowed from the donor language, Greenlandic, into the borrowing language, English, is the word, “kayak.” In Greenlandic, “kayak” is pronounced “qajaq.” The q is like a voiceless stop but further back in your mouth and the “a” is pronounced like the “a” in the English pronunciation of the word “father”. In English we pronounce the word kayak like “kaɪæk.” We pronounce the “q” like a “k” and the “j” like a “y”. This is because when a word is borrowed from one language into another, its pronunciation is adapted to suit the phonotactics and phonemic inventory of the borrowing language. 

One word or phrase that I found that was borrowed from one language to another is the word cliché. This word is originally from the French which is the donor language. The word Cliché is defined as something that is very common an idea or phrase that gets overused so much it ends up being less interesting. In French the word Cliché is pronounced as /kli.e/. Now the English version is pronounced as //kliːˈʃeɪ/. Although the word Cliché means the same thing in both languages, The stress patterns are very different. In English the stress pattern falls on just one syllable while in French it’s the second. The pronunciation of the word was adapted to fit the phonemic inventory by adding a schwa sound to the end of the word to match the stress paterns in English

A word or phrase that had been borrowed from one language into another language is the word ” cat”. The word “cat” is spelled as a cat in the English language. however, in the phonetics language, it is spelled as “kaet” and the ae is connected to each other. in the donor language cat, it is pronounced as “Kat”. in the borrowing language the word cat is pronounced as “k ah t”. In the phonetics language, the ae connected letter is pronounced as ah, the c sound sounds like the letter k, and the t remains the same. As one can see this is why the word cat is spelled as kaet in phonetics. the difference between the donor and borrowing is the spelling rather than the pronunciation because the pronunciation is still the same. the pronunciations between the donor and the borrowing are the same in this example. however in different languages when it comes to the phonetics alphabet the words may be pronounced differently. some letters and words will be different which leads to such pronunciations being different.

One word that I found that was interestingly borrowed from one language (the donor language) into another language (the borrowing language) is the word champagne. This particular word is of multiple origins but was borrowed from the French vocabulary into the English vocabulary. In French champagne is pronounced like cham+pagne [ʃɑ̃.paɲ] and in English it is pronounced like sham+payn [ʃæmˈpeɪn]. Even though champagne has the same definition in both languages, the pronunciation of the word has adapted to fit into the phonemic inventory and phonotactics of English. There are a couple of differences between the way English speakers and French speakers pronounce the word ‘champagne’ an English speaker pronounces the [ʃ] sound like ‘sh’, while a French speaker pronounces [ʃ] like ‘ch’. Instead of using a nasalized vowel like [ɑ̃] which is pronounced like ‘am’, we replaced it with the front low unrounded vowel [æ]. As for the second syllable a French speaker would pronounce ‘pagne’ using the following sounds: [p],[a], [ɲ]. In English we don’t have a palatal nasal sound, so we replaced it with the high-mid, tense, front vowel [eɪ].

When I was younger, of course growing up in New York, our slang here is not the most “lingustic”. One phrase I can think of at this moment is when I say “watchu mean” or “watchu talkin bout”. Of course, it means “what are you talking about?” but since it is the lingo over here, everyone understands it. I could say its just the accent, but it feels easier for me to say than saying it correctly. Now that I am older, I understand that i have to try to talk more like an adult and use correct terms.