American Sign Language In
American Sign Language, several signs which have a pre-specified initial and final location in reference to the body of the person signing (such as the signs RESTAURANT, PARENT, or TWINS) can have the order of these two locations reversed in contexts which seem to be purely phonological. While not possible with all signs, this does happen with quite a few. For example, the sign DEAF, prototypically made with the "1" handshape making contact first with the cheek and then moving to contact the jaw (as in the sentence FATHER DEAF), can have these locations reversed if the preceding sign, when part of the same
constituent, has a final location more proximal to the jaw (as in the sentence MOTHER DEAF). Both forms of the sign DEAF are acceptable to native signers. A proposed prerequisite for metathesis to apply in ASL is that both signs must be within the same region on the body. Constraints on the applications of metathesis in ASL has led to discussions that the phonology breaks down the body into regions distinct from settings.
Amharic Amharic has a few minor patterns of metathesis, as shown by
Wolf Leslau. For example, "matches" is sometimes pronounced as , "nanny" is sometimes pronounced as . The word "Monday" is , which is the base for "Tuesday" , which is often metathesized as . All of these examples show a pair of consonants reversed so that the stop begins the next syllable.
Azerbaijani Metathesis among neighbouring consonants happens very commonly in
Azerbaijani: • > "bridge" • > "leaf" • > "soil" • > "smoke"
Danish Some common nonstandard pronunciations of
Danish words employ metathesis: • > "pictures" • > "through" But metathesis has also historically changed some words: • > " (Christian) cross"
Egyptian Arabic A common example of metathesis in
Egyptian Arabic is when the order of the word's root consonants has changed. • Classical Arabic > Egyptian Arabic
gōz "husband" • Classical Arabic >
ma‘la’a "spoon" • Persian
zanjabil > Egyptian Arabic
ganzabīl ~
zanzabīl "ginger" The following examples of metathesis have been identified in Egyptian Arabic texts, but are not necessarily more common than their etymological spellings: • > "God curse!" • > "theatre troupe" • > "philosophy" The following loanwords are also sometimes found with metathesis: • > "monologue" • > "hospital" • > "penalty" (in
football) The likely cause for metathesis in the word "hospital" is that the result resembles a common word pattern familiar to Arabic speakers (namely a Form X verbal noun). Perhaps the clearest example of metathesis in Egyptian Arabic is the modern name of the city of
Alexandria: ()
Iskandariya (). In addition to the metathesis of
x /ks/ to /sk/, the initial
Al of
Alexandria has been reanalyzed as the Arabic definite article.
English Metathesis is responsible for some common
speech errors, such as children acquiring
spaghetti as
pasketti. The word
ask has the nonstandard variant
ax pronounced ; the spelling
ask is found in Shakespeare and in the
King James Bible and
ax in Chaucer, Caxton, and the
Coverdale Bible. The word "ask" derives from
Proto-Germanic *aiskōną. Some other frequent English pronunciations that display metathesis are: •
nuclear >
nucular (re-analysed as
nuke +
-cular suffix in
molecular, binocular) •
prescription >
perscription •
introduce >
interduce •
asterisk >
asterix •
comfortable >
comfturble •
cavalry >
calvary •
iron >
iorn •
foliage >
foilage •
aforementioned >
afrementioned •
pretty >
purty •
jewelry >
jewlery •
animal >
aminal The process has shaped many English words historically.
Bird and
horse came from
Old English and ; and were also written and . The Old English underwent metathesis to , which became Modern English . The Old English "three" formed "thrid" and
þrēotene "thirteen". These underwent metathesis to forms which became Modern English and . The Old English verb "to work" had the passive participle "worked". This underwent metathesis to , which became Modern English . The Old English "hole" underwent metathesis to
þryl. This gave rise to a verb "pierce", which became Modern English , and formed the compound "nose-hole" which became Modern English (May have occurred in the early Middle English Period: "nosþyrlu" ( 1050); "nos-thirlys" ( 1500). In 1565 "nosthrille" appears; "thirl"/"thurl" survived even longer, until 1878). Metathesis is also a common feature of the
West Country dialects.
Finnish In western dialects of
Finnish, historical stem-final /h/ has been subject to metathesis (it is lost in standard Finnish). That leads to variant word forms: • "stallion" (standard * > ) • "smoke" (standard * > ) • "lie" (standard * > ) • "boat" (standard * > ) Some words have been standardized in the metathetized form: • * > "sorrow" • * > "family" • * > "hero" • * > "untrue" Sporadic examples include the word "green", which derives from older , and the vernacular change of the word "jovial" to (also a separate word meaning "bristly").
French Etymological metathesis occurs in the following French words: • from popular Latin
berbex meaning "sheep" (early 12th century). • from popular Latin
formaticus, meaning "formed in a mold" (1135). • (1654) from French
mousquitte (1603) by metathesis. From Spanish
mosquito ("little fly"). Deliberate metathesis also occurs extensively in the informal
French pattern of speech called
verlan (itself an example: '''' • '
> ' • '
> ' • '
> ' Some Verlan words are metathesized more than once: • '
> ' > ''''
Ancient Greek In
Greek, the present
stem often consists of the
root with a
suffix of
y (˰ in Greek). If the root ends in the vowel
a or
o, and the consonant
n or
r, the
y exchanges position with the consonant and is written
i: •
*cháryō >
chaírō "I am glad" —
echárē "he was glad" •
*phányō >
phaínō "I reveal" —
ephánē "he appeared" For metathesis of vowel length, which occurs frequently in
Attic and
Ionic Greek, see
quantitative metathesis.
Hebrew In
Hebrew the
verb conjugation (binyan) hitpaēl () undergoes metathesis if the first consonant of the root is an alveolar or postalveolar fricative. Namely, the pattern
hiṯ1a22ē3 (where the numbers signify the root consonants) becomes
hi1ta22ē3. Examples: • No metathesis: root
lbš =
hitlabbēš ("he got dressed"). • Voiceless alveolar fricative: root
skl =
histakkēl ("he looked [at something]"). • Voiceless postalveolar fricative: root
šdl =
hištaddēl ("he made an effort"). • Voiced alveolar fricative: root
zqn =
hizdaqqēn ("he grew old"); with assimilation of the T of the conjugation. • Voiceless alveolar affricate: root
t͡slm =
hit͡stallēm ("he had a photograph of him taken"); with assimilation (no longer audible) of the T of the conjugation. Hebrew also features isolated historical examples of metathesis. For example, the words
keves and
kesev (meaning "lamb") both appear in the Torah.
Hindustani Like many other natural languages Urdu and Hindi also have metathesis like in this diachronic example: Sanskrit ()
janma > Urdu and Hindi
janam "Birth" More examples • Portuguese became Urdu () and Hindi (
girjā), meaning "church"
Hungarian In case of a narrow range of
Hungarian nouns, metathesis of a
h sound and a
liquid consonant occurs in
nominative case, but the original form is preserved in
accusative and other suffixed forms: • "chalice", but (accusative), (possessive), (plural) • "burden", but (acc.), (poss.), (pl.) • "flake", but (acc.), (poss.), (pl.) The other instances are [intestinal] villus/fluff/fuzz/nap vs.
bolyhok, vs.
molyhos down/pubescence [on plants], and the obsolete animal's fetus (cf.
vemhes "pregnant [animal]"). The first of them is often used in the regular form ().
Japanese • for (), meaning "atmosphere" or "mood" • Small children commonly refer to
kusuri "medicine" as
sukuri. •
arata- "new" contrasts with
atarashii "new". The following are examples of argot used in the entertainment industry. • for (), the former meaning "content [of news article]", "food ingredient", "material (for joke or artwork)", the latter "seed", "species","source" • for • The word for "sorry",
gomen, is sometimes inverted to
mengo (
backslang).
Kildin Sami Metathesis is relatively common in Kildin Sami: some consonant clusters can have a metathetic option, and both forms oftentimes are considered to be equal variants of one another. • '
~ ' "the South; southern" • Proto-Samic:
*puolvë > '
~ ' "knee" • Proto-Samic:
*pëlvë > '
~ ' "cloud" • Proto-Samic:
*(h)uvjë > '
~ ' "down (soft feathers)" • Proto-Samic:
*āvlē > '
~ ' "horizontal bar with hooks for hanging a cauldron over a fire"
Kurdish In Kurdish no example has been found according to which sounds exchange places and this, in turn, clarifies the claim that metathesis in Kurdish is sporadic and irregular. •
Maktab >
Matkap •
Tasbih >
tabsih •
tarza >
tazra • qopche >
qoch-pe Lakota • The words and are dialectal variants of the same word, meaning "abalone" or "porcelain". • The word , meaning "rib," has its origins in "side of the body" and "bone", but is more commonly metathesized as .
Navajo In
Navajo, verbs have (often multiple) morphemes prefixed onto the verb stem. These prefixes are added to the verb stem in a set order in a prefix positional template. Although prefixes are generally found in a specific position, some prefixes change order by the process of metathesis. For example, prefix (3i object pronoun) usually occurs before , as in : "I'm starting to drive some kind of wheeled vehicle along" [
hatha →
hattha "hand" • Sanskrit:
cihna >
ciṇha "sign" • Sanskrit:
brāhmaṇa >
bāmhaṇa "
Brahmin"
Proto-Indo-European Metathesis has been used to explain the development of
thorn clusters in
Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It is hypothesised in the non-Anatolian and non-Tocharian branch, a coronal followed by a dorsal *TK first assimilated to *TsK, and thereafter underwent metathesis to *KTs, so *TK > *TsK > *KTs. : PIE "bear" (cf.
Hittite ) > > (cf.
Sanskrit wikt:ऋक्ष|,
Ancient Greek ἄρκτος) : PIE "earth" (cf. Hittite ) →
zero-grade > > (cf. Sanskrit wikt:क्षम्|, Ancient Greek
χθών)
Punjabi Punjabi sometimes corrupts
loanwords via metathesis: • Arabic:
matlab >
matlab >
matbal "meaning" Some
dialectal words in Punjabi also form due to metathesis, such as in
Malwai: •
tuhāḍā >
thauḍā, realised as
thoḍā "your" •
tuhānū̃ >
thaunū̃, realised as
thonū̃ "to ye"
Romanian Similar to the French
verlan is the
Totoiana, a speech form spoken in the village of
Totoi in
Romania. It consists in the inversion of syllables of Romanian words in a way that results unintelligible for other Romanian speakers. Its origins or original purpose are unknown. Its current use is recreative.
Rotuman The
Rotuman language of
Rotuman Island (a part of
Fiji) uses metathesis as a part of normal grammatical structure by inverting the ultimate vowel with the immediately preceding consonant.
Slavic languages Regular metathesis of
liquid consonants is an important historical change during the development of the
Slavic languages: a syllable-final liquid (*
r or *
l), preceded by a short vowel (*
e or *
o), metathesized to become syllable-initial. However, the exact outcome of the change varies across the different Slavic languages. A number of
Proto-Indo-European roots indicate metathesis in Slavic forms when compared with other
Indo-European languages: Various sporadic metatheses also occurred in individual Slavic languages: • Bulgarian (
gárvan)
) ' "back, backwards"
Gacería, an argot of
Castile, incorporates metathesized words: • > Some frequently heard pronunciations in Spanish display metathesis: • > • > • >
Straits Salish languages In the
Salishan languages Northern Straits and
Klallam, metathesis is used as a grammatical device to indicate "actual"
aspect. The actual aspect is most often translated into English as a
be ... -ing progressive. The actual aspect is derived from the "nonactual" verb form by a CV → VC metathetic process (i.e., consonant metathesizes with vowel). Examples from the
Saanich (SENĆOŦEN) dialect of Northern Straits: See Montler (1986, 1989, 2015) and Thompson & Thompson (1969) for more information.
Swahili In
Swahili, some foreign words can undergo metathesis during their importation. For instance, "American" becomes "mmarekani".
Telugu From a comparative study of
Dravidian vocabularies, one can observe that the retroflex consonants () and the liquids of the alveolar series () do not occur initially in common Dravidian etyma, but
Telugu has words with these consonants at the initial position. It was shown that the etyma underwent a metathesis in Telugu, when the root word originally consisted of an initial vowel followed by one of the above consonants. When this pattern is followed by a consonantal derivative, metathesis has occurred in the phonemes of the root-syllable with the doubling of the suffix consonant (if it had been single); when a vowel derivative follows, metathesis has occurred in the phonemes of the root syllable attended by a contraction of the vowels of root and (derivative) suffix syllables. These statements and the resulting sequences of vowel contraction may be summed up as follows: Type 1: V1C1-C² > C1V1-C²C² Type 2: V1C1-V²- > C1V1- Examples: •
lē =
lēta "young, tender" < *eɭa •
rē =
rēyi "night" < *ira •
rōlu "mortar" < oral < *ural
Turkish Two types of metathesis are observed in
Turkish. The examples given are from Anatolian Turkish, though the closely related
Azerbaijani language is better known for its metathesis: •
Close type: • = "bridge" • = "ground" • = "hedgehog" • = "match" • = "neighbour" • = "nobody" • = "flag" • = "sour" • = "alone" •
Distant type: • = '''' "
bulgur" • = "loan" • = '''' "curse" ==In popular culture==