epentesi

Epentesi, or epenthesis in English, is a phonological process in which a sound is inserted into a word. The addition helps satisfy the syllable structure of a language, ease pronunciation, or adapt a word from another language. The term comes from Greek, meaning “placing upon.”

There are two main types. Vowel epenthesis inserts a vowel, often between consonants or after a syllable boundary, to break up clusters or to create a permissible syllable. Consonant epenthesis inserts a consonant for similar phonotactic purposes, though vowel insertions are more common crosslinguistically. A related case is glide epenthesis, where a glide such as [j] or [w] appears to bridge a sequence.

Epenthesis occurs in many languages for various reasons. It frequently resolves illicit consonant clusters, enables smoother word formation across morpheme boundaries, or assists in borrowing and adapting foreign words to a language’s phonotactics. Some languages exhibit systematic epenthesis in specific morphological environments or in loanword phonology.

Examples illustrate its role. In Japanese, loanwords often insert vowels to create native CV syllables, such as sutoresu for stress, effectively breaking up the cluster str. Other loanword adaptations show similar insertions, for instance sutoroberi for strawberry. Epenthesis may also accompany speech from one dialect to another, or arise as a regular part of a language’s syllable inventory.

Epenthesis is distinct from related processes such as metathesis, which reorders sounds, and from assimilation, which changes a sound to resemble neighboring sounds. It is closely linked to general patterns of insertion that shape phonological systems and word formation.