THE ADAPTATION OF ENGLISH CONSONANTS IN KELANTAN MALAY DIALECT

The Malay language largely borrowed words from other languages among others Sanskrit, English and Arabic. Borrowing words from other languages also occurred in Malay dialects, including the Kelantan Malay. The aim of this study is to discuss descriptively the strategies of consonant adaptation involved in word loaning process particularly when the Kelantan Malay dialect loans words from English. This phonological study uses secondary data from Shapri (1980) and supplimenatry data obtained from fieldwork carried out in Kota Bharu, Kelantan. The fieldwork was carried out mainly to assist conformation on the data obtained from Shapri (1980) and to provide an up-to-date data from the Kelantan speakers. Hence, data for this article was gathered through observation. The findings in this article are, English words borrowed into the Kelantan Malay dialect have undergone a number of adaptation strategies. The adaptation strategies used by Kelantanese are consonant substitution, consonant deletion, debuccalisation and epenthesis vowel. These strategies were employed to retain the information of the original language as well as to conform the loaned words with the phonology of the borrower’s language. The findings of this study may give an idea particularly on how English words are adapted by the Kelantanese speakers to be part of Malay words. The borrowing process does not cause the Kelantan dialect to adhere to its grammartical system because some English phonemes are still retained in the dialect.