Phonological Make-up of English Loanwords Incorporated into Punjabi via Urdu Qandeel Hussain Department of English, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan Email: qandeel_hussain2004@yahoo.com Rashid Mahmood Department of English, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan Email: ch.raashidmahmood@gmail.com Muhammad Asim Mahmood Department of Applied Linguistics, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan Email: masimrai@gmail.com Abstract—The present study investigates the route of English words borrowed into Punjabi via Urdu. Differences and similarities between bilingual and monolingual speakers have been highlighted to determine the route of borrowing. The study is based on two corpora: a corpus of 292 English loanwords in Punjabi; and a corpus of 421 English loans in Punjabi and Urdu. Metathesis, aphaeresis, and substitution of consonants are some of the adaptation strategies on the basis of which we differentiate between the output forms of monolingual and bilingual speakers. Index Terms—borrowing, metathesis, aphaeresis, substitution, direct borrowing, interlanguage I. INTRODUCTION A. The Nature of Contact and Linguistic Borrowing Words always travel with the people they belong to and become a source of new vocabulary for other languages. There are so many linguistic and socio-political factors that lead to the adaptation of words. Punjabi and Urdu inherit a long history of lexical borrowing and are among those languages of the Indo-Pak subcontinent that have always remained victims of foreign languages, e.g. Persian, Arabic, and English. With the passage of time, the influence of Arabic and Persian decreased and English took their place as a donor language. Urdu is itself a blend of foreign languages. It is argued that when Muslims first set their feet at the Indo-Pak subcontinent they brought different languages as Arabic, Persian and Turkish. At that time Aryans’ language, who were residing in the subcontinent, was Sanskrit. They considered these foreign languages as ‘mixed’ and ‘impure’ but Muslims welcomed foreign languages and adapted a plethora of words (Sadeed, 2006). As a result, they unconsciously gave birth to a new language to which we know today as ‘Urdu’. Whenever an alien language (or foreign words) tried to make its place in Punjabi and Urdu they warmly welcomed without taking into consideration the impact of that language (or words) on its phonological system. No doubt English, Persian, and Arabic enriched Punjabi and Urdu with a variety of new lexical items but on the other hand they lost a bulk of indigenous words. The word ‘gatta’ that can literally be translated in English as ‘stick candy’ is rarely found in Punjabi because this word and the thing it referred to has been replaced by ‘lolli pop’. It reveals another fact that when an object disappears from a culture the word that refers to that object becomes history and a new object or a word takes its place. Nowadays the word ‘bavarchi khana’ is used in Urdu as it is a foreign word indeed it is a term that is usually used as an alternative of ‘kitchen’. This is how on the one hand English words are enriching Punjabi and Urdu in terms of novel vocabulary on the other hand indigenous words are being threatened by new English terms. Linguistic borrowing is the outcome of ‘language contact’. There are “three kinds of contact situations-when a conquered group adopts the language of its conquerors, when the reverse occurs, and when there is mutual influence leading to a “mixed language” (Wackernagel, 1904 cited in Winford, 2003, p.10). There is a close relationship between language contact and language change as the former leads to the later. It is language contact which gives rise to language change and that can be in the form of sound change, semantic change, and phonological or morphological change. B. Exposure to Western Culture Although Punjabi and Urdu have remained in contact with English since last two centuries but exposure to western culture, especially English culture and language in recent years through media and internet have had a great impact on ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 838-843, September 2012 © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland. doi:10.4304/jltr.3.5.838-843 © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER