Epenthesis of a vowel is known as
anaptyxis (, from Greek ). Some accounts distinguish between "intrusive" optional vowels, vowel-like releases of consonants as phonetic detail, and true epenthetic vowels that are required by the phonotactics of the language and are
acoustically identical with
phonemic vowels.
Historical sound change End of word Many languages insert a so-called
prop vowel at the end of a word, often as a result of the common sound change where vowels at the end of a word are deleted. For example, in the
Gallo-Romance languages, a prop
schwa was added when final non-open vowels were dropped leaving clusters at the end, e.g., Latin '(shiny) black' > * >
Old French 'black' (thus avoiding the impermissible , cf. > 'cart').
Middle of word word 'village street' shown below the Standard Dutch form , spelled etymologically but pronounced with by many speakers, including those from Hasselt. Similarly as above, a vowel may be inserted in the middle of a word to resolve an impermissible word-final consonant cluster. An example of this can be found in
Lebanese Arabic, where 'heart' corresponds to
Modern Standard Arabic and
Egyptian Arabic . In the development of
Old English,
Proto-Germanic 'field, acre' would have ended up with an impermissible final cluster (), so it was resolved by inserting an before the
rhotic consonant: (cf. the use of a
syllabic consonant in
Gothic ). Vowel insertion in the middle of a word can be observed in the history of the
Slavic languages, which had a preference for
open syllables in medieval times. An example of this is the
Proto-Slavic form 'town', in which the
East Slavic languages inserted an epenthetic
copy vowel to open the
closed syllable, resulting in (), which became () in modern Russian. Other Slavic languages used
metathesis for the vowel and the syllable-final consonant, producing *
grodŭ in this case, as seen in Polish ,
Old Church Slavonic , Serbo-Croatian and Czech . In many
West Germanic language varieties (such as
Dutch (including local
Brabantian and
Hollandic dialects),
Limburgish,
Luxembourgish and
Ripuarian), a phonetic is inserted between or and labial or velar (also , in the case of the preceding ). This leads to Dutch 'calm' being pronounced , Limburgish 'apron' being pronounced , Luxembourgish 'people' being pronounced (from
Old High German , a monosyllable) and Ripuarian 'village' being pronounced . The city names
Bergen op Zoom and
Utrecht as pronounced by locals can be spelled
Berrege and
Utereg in
eye dialect. The exact details vary depending on the language and dialect, with some dialects (such as many dialects of Limburgish) permitting the addition across syllable boundaries (but not morpheme boundaries) and others restricting it to the syllable coda (such as Standard Dutch). This unetymological schwa is never written in Standard Dutch, but is usually written in Luxembourgish. In Limburgish and Ripuarian, the practices vary as there is not one standard orthography. Dialects with both types of anaptyxis regularize the schwa-insertion, making it phonemic: , , etc. comparably to the
GOAT split in London English (except that no new phoneme is created, as already exists in Dutch as a phoneme). In those dialects, schwa insertion also occurs between or on the one hand and or on the other. Most speakers with a
hard G do not have as a phoneme in their system; thus, broad Amsterdam and Utrecht pronunciations of
balgen and
bergen are , , with no change in the voicing of the fricative. and are markedly southern (Brabantian/Limburgish-influenced) dialectal pronunciations. Anaptyxis does not occur across morpheme boundaries, so that while the surname can be pronounced , the noun/verb 'intention', 'to intend' is never pronounced *. In
Irish and
Scottish English (also West Germanic varieties), anaptyxis famously occurs in words such as 'film' , spelled 'fillum' in eye dialect. Another environment can be observed in the history of Modern
Persian, in which former word-initial consonant clusters, which were still extant in
Middle Persian, are regularly broken up: Middle Persian 'brother' > modern
Iranian Persian , Middle Persian 'column' >
Early New Persian > modern Iranian Persian . In Spanish, as a phonetic detail, it is usual to find a
schwa vowel in sequences of a consonant followed by a flap. For instance, 'vinegar' may be but also . Many
Indo-Aryan languages carry an inherent vowel after each consonant. For example, in
Assamese, the inherent vowel is "o" (), while in
Hindi and
Marathi, it is "a" (). Sanskrit words like (, ), (, ), (, ), (, ), (, ), (, ) etc. become ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ) etc. in Assamese. Other, non-
Tatsama words also undergo anaptyxis, for example, the English word
glass becomes ().
Beginning of word In the
Western Romance languages, a prothetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with and another consonant, e.g. Latin 'two-edged sword, typically used by cavalry' becomes the normal word for 'sword' in Romance languages with an inserted : Spanish/Portuguese , Catalan , Old French > modern (see also '
swordfish'). French in fact presents three layers in the vocabulary in which initial vowel epenthesis is or is not applied, depending on the time a word came into the language: • insertion of epenthetic in inherited and commonly used learned and semi-learned words, which then drop the following after the medieval period: Latin >
Old French > modern 'star', > Old French > modern 'study', > OF > modern 'school' • insertion of and keeping in learned words borrowed during the
Middle Ages or the
Renaissance: > , > • then in the modern period, is not inserted and uncommon old learned borrowings are remolded to look more like Latin: > , > , > learned Old French > remolded to modern Similarly, at some point in the
Proto-Armenian language and
Classical Armenian, the prothetic vowel was placed at the beginning of the word before the sound , leading to words like (, ) from Iranian (), or (, ) from Iranian ().
Grammatical rule Epenthesis often breaks up a
consonant cluster or vowel sequence that is not permitted by the
phonotactics of a language. Regular or semi-regular epenthesis commonly occurs in languages with
affixes. For example, a
reduced vowel or (here abbreviated as ) is inserted before the English plural suffix and the past tense suffix when the root ends in a similar consonant:
glass →
glasses or ;
bat →
batted . However, this is a
synchronic analysis as the vowel was originally present in the suffix but has been lost in most words.
Borrowed words Vocalic epenthesis typically occurs when words are borrowed from a language that has consonant clusters or
syllable codas that are not permitted in the borrowing language. Languages use various vowels, but schwa is quite common when it is available: •
Hebrew uses a single vowel, the
schwa (pronounced in
Israeli Hebrew). •
Japanese generally uses except after and , when it uses , and after , when it uses an
echo vowel. For example, English
cap becomes in Japanese; English
street, ; the
Dutch name , ; and the
German name , . •
Korean uses in most cases. is used after borrowed , , , , or , although may also be used after borrowed depending on the source language. is used when is followed by a consonant or when a syllable ends with . For example, English
strike becomes , with three epenthetic vowels and a split of English diphthong into two syllables. •
Brazilian Portuguese uses , which, in most dialects, triggers
palatalization of a preceding or :
nerd > ;
stress > ; ''McDonald's
> with normal vocalization of to . Most speakers pronounce borrowings with spelling pronunciations, and others try to approximate the nearest equivalents in Portuguese of the phonemes in the original language. The word stress
became estresse'' as in the example above. •
Classical Arabic does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word, and typically uses to break up such clusters in borrowings: Latin > 'street'. In
Modern Standard Arabic and
Egyptian Arabic, copy vowels are often used as well, e.g. English/French
klaxon (car horn) > Egyptian Arabic 'car horn', but note French > Egyptian Arabic (where corresponds to Modern Standard Arabic ). Many other modern varieties such as
North Levantine Arabic and
Moroccan Arabic allow word-initial clusters, however. •
Persian also does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word and typically uses to break up such clusters in borrowings except between and , when is added. •
Spanish does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word with an in them and adds
e- to such words: Latin > , English
stress > . •
Turkish prefixes
close vowels to loanwords with
initial clusters of
alveolar fricatives followed by another consonant: < Greek (), <
set screw, < Greek (), < Byzantine Greek (), <
steamboat, <
Scotland, < Greek (), < Greek (). The practice is no longer productive as of late 20th century and a few such words have changed back: < < French .
Informal speech Epenthesis most often occurs within unfamiliar or complex consonant clusters. For example, in English, the name
Dwight is commonly pronounced with an epenthetic
schwa between the and the (), and many speakers insert a schwa between the and of
realtor.
Irish English and
Scottish English are some of the dialects that may insert a schwa between and in words like
film () under the influence of
Celtic languages, a phenomenon that also occurs in
Indian English due to the influence of
Indo-Aryan languages like
Hindi. Epenthesis is sometimes used for humorous or childlike effect. For example, the cartoon character
Yogi Bear says "pic-a-nic basket" for
picnic basket. Another example is found in the chants of
England football fans in which England is usually rendered as or the pronunciation of
athlete as "ath-e-lete". Some apparent occurrences of epenthesis, however, have a separate cause: the pronunciation of
nuclear as ''
() in some North American dialects arises out of analogy with other -cular
words (binocular
, particular'', etc.) rather than from epenthesis. In colloquial registers of Brazilian Portuguese, is sometimes inserted between consonant clusters except those with (), () or syllable-ending (; note syllable-final is pronounced in a number of dialects). Examples would be , and . Some dialects also use , which is
deemed as stereotypical of people from lower classes, such as those arriving from
rural flight in internal migrations to cities such as
Rio de Janeiro,
Brasília and
São Paulo.
In Finnish In
Finnish, there are two epenthetic vowels and two nativization vowels. One epenthetic vowel is the
preceding vowel, found in the
illative case ending : → , → . The second is , connecting stems that have historically been consonant stems to their case endings: → . In Standard Finnish, consonant clusters may not be broken by epenthetic vowels; foreign words undergo consonant deletion rather than addition of vowels: () from Proto-Germanic . However, modern loans may not end in consonants. Even if the word, such as a personal name, is native, a
paragogic vowel is needed to connect a consonantal case ending to the word. The vowel is : → , or in the case of personal name, + → (
elative case). Finnish has
moraic consonants: , and are of interest. In Standard Finnish, they are slightly intensified before a consonant in a medial cluster: . Some dialects, like
Savo and
Ostrobothnian, have epenthesis instead and use the preceding vowel in clusters of type and , in Savo also . (In Finnish linguistics, the phenomenon is often referred to as ; the same word can also mean , but it is not a
phoneme in Finnish so there is usually no danger of confusion.) For example, → , → , and Savo → . Ambiguities may result: vs. . (An exception is that in Pohjanmaa, and become and , respectively: → . Also, in a small region in Savo, is used instead.)
In constructed languages Lojban, a
constructed language that seeks
logically-oriented grammatical and phonological structures, uses a number of consonant clusters in its words. Since it is designed to be as universal as possible, it allows a type of anaptyxis called "buffering" to be used if a speaker finds a cluster difficult or impossible to pronounce. A vowel sound that is nonexistent in Lojban (usually /ɪ/ as in ) is added between two consonants to make the word easier to pronounce. Despite altering the phonetics of a word, the use of buffering is completely ignored by grammar. Also, the vowel sound used must not be confused with any existing Lojban vowel. An example of buffering in Lojban is that if a speaker finds the cluster in the word () (pronounced ) hard or impossible to pronounce, the vowel can be pronounced between the two consonants, resulting in the form . Nothing changes grammatically, including the word's spelling and the
syllabication. ==In sign language==