The Phonology of Loanwords in the Ejagham Language

Abstract

A general observation of the lexical stock in the Ejagham language shows that the language has a panoply of borrowed words which originate from Indo-European languages such as English, French and German as well as some local languages. The presence of loanwords in this language to a large extent can be explained by Cameroon‟s earlier colonization by the said countries, resulting to language contact. Schneider (2007), Melchers and Shaw (2011). Interestingly, loanwords in Ejagham have undergone some phonological and morphological restructuring thereby making them conform to the phonetic and syllable structure of the said language. This paper is an analysis of the phonological processes that loanwords undergo to suit the word structure of the recipient language. The work has been divided in two main parts. The first part is a presentation of the syllable structure of the Ejagham language. The second part is a presentation of data and analysis of the loan items from the donor to the recipient language