Some Effects of Varying Phonetic Conditions on Semitic Loan Words in Egyptian

WHEN A WORD PASSES from one language to another, some degree of phonetic modification always takes place. The causes are many: unfamiliar phonemes, different habits of accentuation, etc. The results are governed by a strict set of laws which imposes a regular pattern on such phonetic modifications. At any given moment, then, a word which passes from one language to another is subject to a regular pattern of phonetic change which determines its phonetic structure in the borrowing language. At the moment of borrowing, several factors combine to produce a change, or series of changes, in the phonetic structure of a borrowed word. These factors may be summarized as the phonetic structure of the word in the parent language, the laws in operation at the time of borrowing governing phonetic shift and substitution and dialectal variations in both parent and borrowing languages.2 But speech habits constantly change. Therefore, these factors which determine the phonetic structure of a borrowed word are also constantly changing. We may thus conclude that at two given moments of borrowing, separated by a reasonable amount of time, two distinct patterns of phonetic change will be in evidence. If a given word is borrowed twice, under the influence of these two distinct patterns of phonetic change this word will appear in the borrowing language with two different phonetic structures which may seem to be totally unrelated to each other. The first part of the present discussion is concerned with some effects of such varying phonetic conditions on Semitic loans in Egyptian. Egyptian and Semitic enjoyed a long history of

Arabic · Business · Linguistics · Loan · Semitic languages · Finance · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

• Black Athena

  Martin Bernal•Black Athena : Afroasiatic Roots…•1987

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