English /z/ in 1930s Korean

In this paper, I examine the adaptation of English /z/ in 1930s Korean based on a loanword dictionary published in 1937 (Lee 1937). The key findings are that the adaptation pattern in the 1930s is much more variable and shows sensitivity to multiple factors present in the input language, including allophonic details, orthographic representation, and morphological structure. I discuss the implications of these findings for the debate on the nature of the input in loanword adaptation and the effects of sociolinguistic context on the pattern of adaptation. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides a brief background on Korean phonology. Section 3 presents the data from 1930s Korean. Section 4 provides a discussion of the data and its implications and section 5 concludes the paper.