Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Comments on Vowel insertion phenomenon

Post

Vowel insertion phenomenon

+6
−0

When I, maybe Br.E speaker, pronounce adverbs ending '-bly' I find myself occasionally inserting an extra vowel.

So I say feeble-y, noble-y but I 'correctly' say 'nim-bly' and 'lim-ply' (I've placed the hyphen to approximate stress).

Various online dictionaries give the pronunciation without that extra vowel/different stress:

(I note that Merriam-Webster does provide an alternative pronunciation, but with no explanation)

What is this inclination towards vowel epenthesis called, if it even has a name? I know similar insertions with r has a name: Linking R and intrusive R, but I've not found a similar article on vowel insertion.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

2 comment threads

Non-native observations (3 comments)
Getting a recording or transcription (1 comment)
Non-native observations
Lundin‭ wrote 5 months ago

As a non-native English speaker I have noted that one difficult detail is knowing when to add and pronounce -ally vs -ly. This is a somewhat frequent problem when writing and speaking both. Occasionally, not "occasionly". The impact of lots of foreigners not speaking something properly might have an impact on the language itself. Maybe that is the case here?

Lundin‭ wrote 5 months ago

For example the perhaps most common slip of non-natives is mixing up 3rd person singular verbs (is/was/does) with the other forms (are/were/do). Perhaps common to the point where native English people start to adopt the incorrect grammar as slang or dialects, "how's you". Not to mention Jamaican English - "my feet is my only carriage". I'm sure there a lots of diverse explanations why such slang/dialects appear, but foreign influence is surely one reason. Like how youths in suburbs with lots of immigrants start to develop their own dialects more or less on purpose, as if to have something of their own which is a mix of the local language and their roots.

pureferret ‭ wrote 4 months ago

How am I supposed to pronounce occasionally? Because I'm pretty sure I've been saying occasionly my whole life.