Phonological Analysis of English Loanwords in Dhani

Abstract

Present study aims to explore English loanwords into Dhani dialect of Punjabi language. It focuses on which English words have been borrowed and what kind of phonological adaptations they undergo. It is a qualitative and descriptive study. Data were collected through recordings from thirty participants engaged in general conversation in real life situations in Chakwal district of Rawalpindi Division, Punjab province, Pakistan. Participants were selected through simple random sampling technique. Results retrieved from analysis of the collected data show that English loanwords undergo different phonological strategies i-e substitution, addition, epenthesis and deletion. Substitution is the most prominent whereas deletion is the least prominent of all strategies. Analysis also highlights educational implication of the study.

Phonemic Variation of Urdu Loanwords in Standard British English

“…One language borrows words from another language in different ways. Sipra (2013) discusses three ways cited by Hasan and Khan (2019) as below:…”

“…The original form and pronunciation of loanwords are maintained according to the donor language in adoption whereas loanwords are changed phonologically in adaptation. Substitution, deletion, addition, assimilation, and epenthesis are some common phonological adaptation processes (Hasan & Khan, 2019).…”

“…Loanword adaptations have been a matter of interest for many researchers for a long time. Hasan and Khan (2019) have cited a few recent studies in this regard which include loanword adaptation in Mandarin Chinese conducted by Miao (2005), Kenstowicz and Suchato (2006)'s study on issues in loanword adaptation, English loanwords in the spoken Arabic of the southern part of Iraq carried out by Abdullah and Daffar (2006), influence of orthography on loanword adaptations (Vendelin & Peperkamp, 2006), English loanwords in Burmese explored by Chang (2009), phonotactic adaptation of English loanwords in Arabic (Al-Athwary, 2017) and morphological adaptation of English loanwords in twitter conducted by Dashti and Dashti (2017) etc. In the Pakistani context, studies like Morphophonemics of loanwords in translation (Al-Qinal, 2002), vowel substitution: a comparative study of English loans in Punjabi and Urdu , phonological adaptation of English loanwords in Pahari (A. Q.…”

“…In the Pakistani context, studies like Morphophonemics of loanwords in translation (Al-Qinal, 2002), vowel substitution: a comparative study of English loans in Punjabi and Urdu , phonological adaptation of English loanwords in Pahari (A. Q. Khan & Bukhari, 2011), phonological adaptations of English words borrowed into Punjabi , phonological make-up of English loanwords incorporated into Punjabi via Urdu (Hussain, Mahmood, & Mahmood, 2012), Urdu loanwords in Pakistani English (Bilal, Warraich, Fatima, Tiwana, & Bhatti, 2012), linguistic study of borrowings from English to Urdu (Sipra, 2013), morphology of loanwords in Urdu (Mangrio, 2016), phonological treatment of vowels in English loanwords by Saraiki speakers (Atta, Syed, & Bughio, 2017), phonological analysis of English loanwords in Dhani (Hasan & Khan, 2019) and the study of English loanword phonology in Urdu (N. W. Khan et al, 2020) are some of the recent studies on Pakistani languages. Previously English loanwords into different languages have been explored by many researchers but there are few researches on loanwords into English language.…”

“…Levenshtein's (1966) distance algorithm was followed to identify comparisons between Urdu and English speakers' pronunciation of Urdu loanwords. The framework has already been followed by Sanders and Chin (2009), Garcia and Yapici (2014), Chohan and García (2019) and Hasan and Khan (2019). Figure 2 below illustrates the algorithm:…”