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Comments on Vowel insertion phenomenon

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Vowel insertion phenomenon

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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.

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2 comment threads

Non-native observations (3 comments)
Getting a recording or transcription (1 comment)
Non-native observations
Lundin‭ wrote about 1 year 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 about 1 year 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 12 months ago

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