Phonological Nativization of Arabic, Portuguese and English Loanwords in Odia

Abstract

Languages come into contact through invasion, war, colonization, migration, trade and commerce between different communities. In India, for example, the Arab invasion of Sindh brought in the languages of the Arab world, such as Arabic, Turkish and Persian. Later, Portuguese, Dutch and English trading companies dominated the field of trade and commerce and successfully spread their languages in the Indian sub-continent. As a result, almost all Indian languages have borrowed words from these foreign languages and enriched their vocabularies. Like other languages in India, Odia, an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, which is spoken in the Indian territory of Odisha, came into contact with Arabic, Persian, Portuguese and English, and has borrowed several words from these languages.