Comparison between English Loanwords in Thai and Indonesian: A Comparative Study in Phonology and Morphology

Loanwords are very influential in language learning because learners have a tendency to pronounce or write target language’s words based on the corresponding loanwords in their first languages. For that reason, research on English loanwords in both Thai and Indonesian is a potential source for Thai and Indonesian language learning, and even English as a foreign language (EFL) learning in Thailand and Indonesia. The objective of this research is to find out the differences and similarities between English loanwords in Thai and those in Indonesian in terms of their phonological and morphological adaptation. Since not all suprasegmental features, such as tone, exist in both languages, the phonological analysis pays more attention on vowel and consonant changes. The morphological analysis on the other hand focuses on morphological changes of polymorphemic words. The data of this research were collected from previous studies and interviews with native speakers of each language. The finding shows that both Thai and Indonesian have different as well as similar processes of phonological and morphological adaptation of English loanwords.