Phonemic Variation of Urdu Loanwords in Standard British English

Abstract

Borrowing is one of the most common sources of new words in languages and loanwords are one of the types of borrowings across language boundaries. The English language has adopted many words from other languages throughout history. In this process, loanwords sometimes undergo certain variations. The present study is about phonemic variation of Urdu loanwords in standard British English. A list of 135 Urdu words of daily use that English has borrowed was compiled purposively from Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, 10th ed. (2020) for analysis. All words in the list were transcribed into IPA. Urdu pronunciation was checked from ("Urdu Lughat," 2017) and Farhang-e-Talaffuz (2017) whereas English pronunciation was checked from Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary 10th ed. (2020) and a comparison was made to highlight phonemic variation. Analysis of data indicates that almost one third loanwords retain their pronunciation and among the rest, the majority of words undergo change of vowel sounds whereas others either change a consonant sound or vowel and consonant both in some cases.