Kerinci dialects are notorious for their differences from standard and proto-Malay: as a corollary to the complicated sound changes, which changed root-final *-V(C) of all lexical words practically beyond recognition, all suffixes got lost. Each root-final *-V(C) moreover appears in 4 different shapes, dependent 1) on the presence or absence of a non-prenasalised voiced stop somewhere in the word, and 2) on its syntactic position (phrase-finally or not). In "More (on) Kerinci Sound Changes" (in: K.Alexander Adelaar, and Robert Blust (eds): Between Worlds: linguistic papers in memory of David John Prentice. Pacific Linguistics, 149-176) I reconstructed hierarchically ordered sets of 16 sound changes which account for the current state of Sungai Penuh Kerinci.

At various times in its development Kerinci absorbed loanwords. In this paper I shall try to determine at which stage of development of the language which loanwords jumped in. It may then even be possible to pinpoint some of the the proposed sound changes in absolute time, provided the influx of different sets of loanwords can be related to historically documented (changes of) contacts with the outside world.