First Language Role in Loanwords Adaptation: A Study of English Loanwords Into Taif Arabic

Abstract

Language is the best means of communication with the people in your surroundings. People create or find word to name and describe new things which they never saw, examining the role of the speaker’s native language in loanword adaptation. This study aimed to investigate how the English loanwords into Taif Arabic (TA) are phonologically adapted. The study adopted a qualitative and descriptive approach. The study collected 190 English loanwords from national TA speakers of various ages, genders, and educational levels. These loanwords were transcribed using IPA symbols. Online Cambridge Dictionary is used to compare the pronunciation of the loanwords in DL and RL. The outcomes of this paper discovered that substitution was the most common adaptive process and deletion was the rarest. It can be concluded that the determinant of the adaptation process is the phonological rules of the speaker’s native language. The results of this study are of great benefit to learners of Arabic English. (UMHA), a Saudi dialect. She investigated the extent of change, the source of loanwords, and the impact of the speaker’s age, gender, and level of education on the use of loanwords. Using a questionnaire, she collected data from 80 participants with age, gender, and literacy differences. Investigations have shown that most loanwords were borrowed from Turkish, followed by Persian and Italian. She attributed the reason for the Turkish words influence to the language contact resulting from the 400 years ruling of Saudi Arabia by the Ottoman Empire and the interaction with pilgrims who visit Mecca every year. The results also showed that there is a variation in the frequency of the use of loanwords in terms of the three variables: age, gender, and literacy. For example, old participants used loanwords more than young ones, males used loanwords more than females, and uneducated participants used loanwords more than the educated ones. Another study was conducted by Omar (2018) who explored the relationship between sex and the use of English loanwords in SA as realized in the frequency and morphological adaptations of these loanwords. As for frequency, the results of the study revealed that female speakers use English loanwords more frequently than male speakers for showing more prestige than the other gender. The results also showed that both genders share many morphological adaptations of loanwords with some differences.