How is tone assigned to loanwords borrowed from non-tonal languages?

Asked Apr 29 '13 at 18:45

Active Apr 29 '13 at 18:45

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In a tonal language like Cantonese, how is stress assigned to loanwords (from languages which don't have a tone distinction)?

For example, Hong Kong Cantonese has various words borrowed from English, a language without a tone distinction. Words such as:

So how is it so that these loanwords attain the tone pattern that they do? Is there some kind of pattern?

asked Apr 29 '13 at 18:45

Danger Fourpence

There's a bit on this in Modern Cantonese Phonology (摩登廣州話語音學) by Benedict & Bauer, but I don't have a copy on hand at the moment. They suggested that stressed syllables often end up with tone 1 (level high). – jogloran Apr 30 '13 at 00:58
@Aerlinthe: Yup, it's a duplicate. – James Grossmann Apr 30 '13 at 21:24
My sincerest oopsies! For some reason, I hadn't searched for a duplicate. – Danger Fourpence Apr 30 '13 at 21:36
According to the people at Chinese.SE they will sound just like in their origin language and won't get tones at all, not even the neutral tone. Unless they mean that's only for borrowings from English and/or only for borrowing acronyms: Do acronyms borrowed from English use neutral tone for all syllables? – hippietrail Sep 28 '13 at 12:51

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