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From: mathias@uhunix4.its.Hawaii.Edu (Gerald B Mathias)
Subject: Re: Acquisition of phonemes thfough foreign influences
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Date: Sat, 23 Sep 1995 17:53:15 GMT
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Krishna Kunchithapadam (krisna@cham.cs.wisc.edu) wrote:
: philldon@ix.netcom.com (donald phillips ) writes:
: :
: : Are languages known to acquire phonemes as a result of foreign
: : influence?  I am thinking specifically of English after the Norman
: : invasion and through the Renaissance.  It occurs to me that English has
: : the 'zh' phoneme, primarily (as far as I know) in French
: : borrowings 'treasure', 'casual'.  German, English's close relative,
: : does not.  Did 'zh' exist in English pre-1066?
: :     On the other hand, the Hebrew 'cherub' and 'chutzpah' are not
: : pronounced with the Hebrew 'kh' but with the English 'ch' (as in
: : cheese) or 'k'.  

I'd suggest that 'zh' originally came into English (if really from French,
as suggested above) reinterpreted as /zy/.  I remember having trouble with
the word "rouge" at the age of nine or 10--it came out /ruwj/, but sounded
wrong--although I had no trouble with "treasure," etc.  My interpretation
is that I had not acquire /3/ (or however we handle "zh" in ASCII phonemes)
and /zy#/ was phonotactically impossible.  It is only with the mastery of
such words as "rouge," the newer form of "garage," "gendarme," etc., that
one adds /3/ to his phonemic repertory.

On the original issue, Japanese seems possibly to have added /f/ and /c/
([ts]), along with a redefinition of /t/, to its phonemic inventory under
the influence of borrowing from European languages.

Bart Mathias 
