TONAL ADAPTATION OF ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN EARLY CANTONESE

Contact between two cultures and languages often gives rise to linguistic borrowing. In tracing the development of a set of English loanwords in six texts compiled in the 19th and early 20th centuries for teaching Westerners Cantonese, it is observed that these loanwords are pronounced with a basic tone in the 19th century texts but with a changed tone in the 20th century texts. Changed tones are used to signal familiarity, a function that is observed in the Cantonese historical texts. The present study suggests that the use of changed tones on a loanword is an indication of its integration into the lexicon of Cantonese. The examination of the six texts shows that such an integration process might take several decades to complete