Prothesis: The addition of a sound at the beginning of a word. Example: word-initial + stop clusters in Latin gained a preceding in Old Spanish and Old French; hence, the Spanish word for "state" is estado, deriving from Latin status. Nasalization: Vowels followed by nasal consonants can become nasalized. If the nasal consonant is lost but the vowel retains its nasalized pronunciation, nasalization becomes phonemic, that is, distinctive. Example: French "-in" words used to be pronounced , but are now pronounced , and the is no longer pronounced (except in cases of liaison). Examples of specific sound changes in various languages Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law Canaanite shift Cot-caught merger Dahl's law Grassmann's law Great Vowel Shift (English) Grimm's law High German consonant shift Kluge's law Phonetic change "f → h" in Spanish Ruki sound law Slavic palatalization Sound change in Japanese Umlaut Verner's law Notes References Anttila, Raimo (1989). Historical and Comparative Linguistics. John Benjamins. Campbell, Lyle (2004). Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. The MIT Press. Hale, Mark (2007). Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method. Oxford, Blackwell Hock, Hans Henrich (1991). Principles of Historical Linguistics. Mouton De Gruyter. McDorman, Richard E. (1999). Labial Instability in Sound Change. Organizational Knowledge Press. Morley, Rebecca (2019). Sound Structure and Sound Change: A Modeling Approach. Berlin: Language Science Press. . . Open Access. http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/251 Sihler, Andrew L. (2000). Language History: An Introduction. John Benjamins. Historical linguistics Phonology