People interested in the mutation of loanwords might want to check out the following articles. Griffen, T. D. (1974). The development of Welsh Affricates: A change through borrowing. In Lingua 34:149-165. Fowkes, R. (1976). Metanalysis and reshaping in Welsh. Word 26:187-206. Fowkes, R. (1949). Initial mutation of loanwords in Welsh. Word 6:205-213. Griffen (1974) concerns the original subject of this post, the mutation of affricates. He claims that words with the English "ch" sound can not only be lenited but nasalized, into some sort of nasal affricate. (My phonetics professor doesn't think this is possible! Fowkes (1949, 1975) examine some older loanwords where the original (English) form of a borrowing is analyzed as mutated (lenited) & a new underlying form is created. Examples are E. velvet -> W. melfed, E. honest -> W. gonest, E. grand -> W. crand. Similar things do happen in native words, such as "gallt" (which was originally just "allt" ). o - - - - - - - - o _ Nicholas Kibre --- 6500njk@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu _ Adran Ieithyddiaeth, Prifysgol Califfornia, Santa Barbara o - - - - - - - - o