Epenthesis (definition)

Epenthesis is the insertion of a sound within a word. Epenthetic segments are often vowels with neutral qualities like [ə] or [ɨ] or copies of the vowel in the preceding syllable. Epenthesis is regularly employed to break up undesirable or disallowed consonant clusters. English pronunciation of the word film is known to include an epenthetic vowel; the word can appear as [fɪlm], which contains a coda that lacks falling sonority, or [fɪləm], which is disyllabic and contains no consonant cluster.

Epenthesis is very common in Gaelic. Orthographic convention does not reflect the pronunciation of the inserted vowel, similarly to the English film example. This is apparent in in words like orm [ɔrəm] "on me" and Alba [alapə] "Alba" where the epenthetic vowel is spoken but not written.

For information on epenthesis in Gaelic see Epenthesis

See Also

• Epenthesis
• Hiatus
• Syllable (definition)

External Links

• http://akerbeltz.org/index.php?title=Helping_vowel
• http://akerbeltz.org/index.php?title=Svarabhakti_or_The_Helping_Vowel
• http://akerbeltz.org/index.php?title=Intrusive_T_or_Why_we%27re_writing_sròn_not_*stròn

The link below takes you away from the Gaelic Wiki to Wikipedia. Since wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, they often contain inaccurate information. So be careful!

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epenthesis
• http://rhetoric.byu.edu/Figures/E/epenthesis.htm

References

• Crystal, David. (1997) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.