epentese

Epenthesis, also spelled epentesis, is the phonological process of inserting a sound into a word. The term comes from Greek etymology meaning “putting in.” It can involve vowels or consonants and occurs in many languages, both in the historical development of a language and in contemporary speech.

Two major types are vowel epenthesis, where a vowel is inserted (often to form a legal syllable), and consonant epenthesis, where a consonant is inserted (often to break up difficult clusters). It can be intraprosodic (within a word) or occur at morpheme boundaries when affixes are joined.

Purposes include smoothing pronunciation, repairing hiatus, satisfying phonotactic constraints, or aiding the transition between morphemes. Epenthesis also plays a role in the adaptation of loanwords and in dialectal variation and speech style, with casual speech tending to insert vowels.

In Japanese, loanwords from English frequently show epenthesis to fit the language’s CV syllable structure. Examples include space becoming supēsu (スペース), street becoming sutōrito (ストリート), and sports becoming supōtsu (スポーツ).

Historical and theoretical notes: Epenthesis is a common mechanism in language change and phonology. Some languages exhibit predictable patterns, while others vary by dialect or sociolinguistic context. It is distinct from related processes such as metathesis or assimilation.