We need to understand the meaning of the word “Epenthesis”. In simple words, the insertion of sound or letter in the middle of a word is Epenthesis.
Vowel epenthesis is often motivated by the need to make consonant variations very different. Epenthetic sound is not always a vowel. For example, consider two unknown articles “a” and “an”. We know that “a” is used before consonant sounds and “an” is used before vowel sounds. We see this as an epenthetic sound that breaks the sequence of two vowels: an “apple” – an “apple”.
Epenthesis occurs many times, both in the official language and in one language. The addition of ‘i’ before ‘t’ in “speciality” is an example. The pronunciation of ‘jewelry’ as ‘jewelry’ is the result of epenthesis, as is the pronunciation of ‘contentuous’ for ‘contentious’, other examples – the ‘relitor’ of the ‘realtor’ and that of the favorite sports announcer, the ‘athalete’ for ‘athlete’.
The creation of bunches is a mind-boggling technique. It requires quick developments of the vocal mechanical assembly to guarantee smooth advances starting with one consonant then onto the next. For the extremely little youngster, arrangements of consonants might be too hard to even consider articulating in quick progression. Therefore, a vowel – normally a schwa – might be embedded to separate a two-consonant bunch. An illustration of this would be the word develop/gr??/being acknowledged as/g?r??/where the schwa vowel/?/is embedded between the two consonants that structure the underlying/gr-/group of the word. When embedded, the vowel is alluded to as the epenthetic vowel.
Epenthesis occurs for a variety of reasons. Epenthesis can be represented in writing or as a feature of spoken language only.
Examples of Epenthesis
Separating vowels
A consonant may be added to separate vowels in hiatus.
drawing ? drawring
Bridging consonant clusters
A consonant may be placed between consonants in a consonant cluster where the place of expression is different.
- something ? somepthing
- hamster ? hampster
Breaking consonant clusters
A vowel may be placed between consonants to separate them.
Hamtramck ? Hamtramick