1245: Phonetics of Loan Words May 7, 2018

Spelling is not a motivator for major linguistic change, but does contribute to some phonetic variation. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that English spelling no longer matches up with pronunciation, but neither do are English speakers known for bending over backwards, so to speak, in order to accommodate for the pronunciation of foreign words. For instance, the Catalan word 'paella' is pronounced /pajejə/ in US English (and Spanish and Catalan), whereas in the UK it is produced as [pajelə]; this however does not make speakers in the UK 'wrong', that is unless they try to use it in Spanish or Catalan that way, because words change when they enter another language. This of course also happens both ways, with English loan words changing to accommodate for other languages' phonetic rules or normalities, such as how 'merry christmas' changes in Hawaiian, or how the country 'Kiribati' (pronounced /kiribas/) comes from the name 'Gilberts'.