PHONETIC CHANGES OF ARABIC LOANWORDS FOUND IN WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY

The title of this research is Phonetic Changes of Arabic Loanwords Found in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. This research aims to describe the kinds of sound change that occur in Arabic loanword in English. The writer chooses this topic of research because the phonetic changes in loanword are still debatable and it seems like arbitrary. Meanwhile, the object of this research is sound changes of Arabic loanword in English in which the analyses are focused on phonetic changes and the writer ignores its meaning. Arabic loanword is chosen as the data because it has unique character in its pronunciation and writing system. The method of this research is descriptive qualitative. Arabic loanwords found in the dictionary are analyzed by using theory of sound change by Terry Crowley with phonetics and phonological approach. This research concludes that in linguistic borrowing, loanword comes based on the rules of sound change. There are 68 Arabic words borrowed by English. The research shows that there are eight types of sound change in borrowing process of Arabic word in English, they are: lenition and fortition, deletion of phoneme, addition of phoneme, metathesis, fusion, unpacking, assimilation and abnormal sound change. In addition, this research also describes transformation of alphabetic system between Arabic and Roman alphabet