User:Soap/insert

See also: User:Soap/silent

This is the opposite of a list of silent letters ... a list of unwritten sounds in English words pronounced in at least some dialects and contexts. My rules here are much looser than for the silent letters, e.g. including substitutions rather than only insertions, and including nonstandard pronunciations.

consonants

b

chimney, family

ember

bumbershoot comes from earlier umbershoot "to make it sound more interesting"

d

• sound, drownd, gownd

/dʒ/

Unexpected soft g where it would normally be hard occurs in margarine, gaol, and one reading of Sacagawea.

Abbrevations like veg, frig (for refrigerator), rego, and Reg (for Reggie, as in Archie Comics) also could count as having an unspelled /dʒ/, but I would put these on a lower tier, since abbreviations can violate all sorts of other spelling conventions and including them all would drown out the more unique entries.

f

lieutenant

g

• Various Italian surnames in America
• Possibly the intrusive /g/ in -ng- words like singer, but this might be a historical retention, so Im still looking for something more.
• Possibly some words with the clusters /ŋl ŋr/, but this too may be a retention since there is no independent /ŋ/ historically
• Surnames like Nguyen and Ngo can have intrusive /g/. I even remember a schoolbook giving /əŋ'go/ as the pronunciation for Ngo

h

• hit (for it) and various vowel-initial words in dialects with /h/-restoration

k

• length, escape
• espresso
• Possibly hough and Youghiogeny, since /k/ is not an expected pronunciation for gh
• M'Naghten
• nonstandard pronunciation of knive and kniving; see talk:knive
• acknowledge retains /k/ that has been lost in knowledge; it is not from the Latinate prefix ac-

Unexpected /k/ for c before front vowels exists in a few words: soccer, sceptic, cyattie (presumably from catty), and a few local pronunciations of the name Kosciusko perhaps due to a second /sk/ cluster at the end of the word. There is also supercalifragilisticexpialidocious if we should count it as one word rather than a close-typed compound.

Verb forms have a variety of strategies:

sync ---> synched

sic ---> sicced

arc ---> arced

picnic ---> picnicking

l

chimney (serves for both /b/ and /l/)

Bristol comes from an earlier form without the final /l/

salmon comes from an earlier form without the /l/

words like both, hope, etc (perhaps only after /o/) are pronounced with an /l/ in some Americans' speech. bolth is well-known enough to be listed here

m

Possible /n/ > /m/ in clamjamphrie and perhaps a few other words

n ~ /ŋ/

• pundit
• nightingale
• skellington, apparently without nasal assimilation. possibly due to association with placenames, where -ing-ton is a common ending
• finagle
• Portingale
• messenger, and see that page for a list of other words such as passenger which historically acquired an intrusive /n/

p

• something
• nope, yep (from earlier no and yeah)
• some people use /p/ in words like naphtha and diphthong

r

colonel

Those related to intrusive R are trivial and unlimited, though there are some words such as lark that have developed an /r/ outside this context, perhaps in imitation of a broader vowel in a nonrhotic dialect, which then spread

bridegroom (there was originally no /r/ in groom)

izzard, assuming Scottish speech has always been majority rhotic

erm, a spelling pronunciation that spread

er ~ err, which we describe as restricted to nonrhotic dialects, but I've at least heard some people say "er(r)" with an audible /r/ sound, and I think I've even heard "er ... uh"

s

• The unwritten 's at the end of many store names. This also serves for /z/

/ʃ ~ tʃ/

• betch (children's speech, likely back-formation from bet(ch) your, which is apparently a second meaning of betcha). The phrase betch my life returns only a tiny number of Google hits.
• Featherstonehaugh, since despite the many deletions from the original name, the appearance of /ʃ/ remains a mystery

t

dance, across ("acrossed"), cliff ("clift")

possibly a few French loans where a consonant that is silent in French is pronounced in English

schizophrenia, possibly by association with German being the main language of psychiatry for a good period of time

/þ/

height

As a bit of trivia, the ancestor of the word tooth might have been without its /þ/ in all early Germanic languages, but then restored it analogically from inflections.

v

I can only think of the inserted -v- that shows up in words like Shavian but sometimes appears ad-hoc since there is no other comfortable way to pronounce newer coinages like Pagelowian

w

one , and dialectal forms of similar words like oat and oak

Qantas (but see vowels section)

Yreka, California, and arguably the letter Y itself

Ypres

z

all's i know (see all's); however this is probably a contraction of as and not a true insertion.

store names, as above under /s/

Names like Mackenzie and Menzies, though these are spelling pronunciations

vowels

This will be much more difficult. I will categorize them by phonemes, not by letters. But I believe the original site i saw used letters, so for example Qantas would count as an insertion of u rather than w.

/æ/

• Mc

/ɛ/

• some words from Egyptology
• some acronyms

/ə/

• realtor, film
• workaday, as people today are surely unaware of the etymology. Dutch may have something similar in words like lieveling vs German Liebling

/i/

• Appalachian English rotates final /o ə/ to /ə i/, hence words like holler, feller (possibly also with intrusive /r/) on the one hand, and sody, opry on the other.
• kielbasa, sometimes pronounced with final /-i/
• Surnames like D'Angelo, and some other surnames with apostrophes after a single letter and before a vowel

Its possible there is a true insertion somewhere, perhaps in a proper name with an unusual cluster, but otherwise all I can find are rotations.

Unexpectedly sounded e

• reveille is borrowed from French, but has its final e pronounced as /i/ (and it is not representing French é either)

/u/

paczki. in some people's pronunciation the first vowel approaches /u/ due to local hyperforeignism.

others

OB/GYN is pronounced as an acronym despite not being one and arguably therefore has three inserted syllables