[Lingtyp] Consonant v. Vowel correspondences in loanwords

[joo at shh.mpg.de]

Dear all,

Thank you for replying to my earlier question regarding the rarity of certain phonemes in loanwords. All the comments were very helpful.
May I ask another question: I would like to know whether in loanwords, consonants correspond more regularly(consistently) to the source consonants than vowels do to the source vowels.
For example, in English loanwords in Japanese, the consonants correspond correspond more or less regularly (systematically) to their English counterparts. English /p t k m n ng/ all correspond to Japanese /p t k m n Ngu/ respectively, with only a few exceptions.
But for vowels, the correspondence is less consistent: English /æ/ sometimes corresponds to Japanese /a/ and sometimes to Japanese /e/ (Kaneko 2006).
I wonder if this can be generalized to state that, in source-loan relationship, consonant correspondences are generally more consistent than vowel correspondences.
I would appreciate any opinion on this.

Regards,
Ian
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