English vs. Māori – Bi-lateral Interfaces and Phonological Loanword Interpretations

Krzysztof Jaskuła

doi:10.56583/fs.2855

Published : 2025-12-21

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2025)

English vs. Māori – Bi-lateral Interfaces and Phonological Loanword Interpretations

dr hab. Krzysztof Jaskuła

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56583/fs.2855

Abstract

This paper concerns linguistic interactions between English and Māori as another example of loanword adaptation. As the prevalent language, English began to influence Māori in New Zealand a couple of centuries ago. Ordinarily, the speakers of English imposed their vocabulary on the Māori community. Crucial in this article is the phonological adaptation of English words into Māori, with special attention paid to the simplification of consonant clusters. This process is occasionally far from straightforward, especially when two or three English consonants in a row require phonological reinterpretation. Moreover, this paper is in line with the recent views that what happens in adaptation need not always be phonological. On the other hand, the apparently dominated linguistic community has found a way to influence New Zealand English vowels and contribute a few lexical items to that language. This paper also proposes a diagram in which the vowels of Māori are represented on the Cardinal Vowel Scale.

Keywords:

consonant group decomposition, Māori, New Zealand English, Cardinal Vowels, svarabhakti

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Jaskuła, K. (2025). English vs. Māori – Bi-lateral Interfaces and Phonological Loanword Interpretations. Facta Simonidis, 18(2), 449–467. https://doi.org/10.56583/fs.2855

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