ABSTRACT
Loanwords involve phonetics and phonology, perspective, lexical system, cross-cultural communication and language contact, and other linguistics or non-linguistics elements. After a loanword was borrowed from a source language and into Mandarin-Chinese, the sound of the loanword changed but is still similar to the source word. Aiming to find out how loanwords influence second language acquisition and cross-cultural communication and start from it, the paper analyzes unmarked vertex vowels and their transfer in different English learning stages. The research designed a corpus that consisted of three-word lists, conducted through perspective experiments, questionnaires, and phonetic experiments on six Mandarin-Chinese speaking participants, and made an investigation on phonetics and phonology transfer by using loanwords as a starting point. The result showed that loanwords will lead to positive L1 transfers for beginners, as similar phones could also make positive transfers for beginners. When it comes to advanced learners, similar segments would make negative transfers.
