fundamental phonological changes, most likely due to their steady influx contributing to the "relatively large phonological inventory" (Kim Schulte) of Romanian. Slavic languages had more than 30 two- or three-member consonant clusters . These clusters were alien to Common Romanian, but many of them appeared in Romanian through borrowing of Slavic terms. Early Slavic loanwords contain two-member consonant sequences. Most Slavic consonant clusters with a first fricative were fully adopted: vlădică ("bishop" from vladika), slugă ("servant" from sluga), zmeu ("dragon" from zmey). The cluster "șt" can be detected in both Slavic loanwords and terms inherited from Latin. The phonetical changes which resulted in this consonant sequence may have started before the first contacts with the Slavic peoples, but early contacts with South Slavic peoples clearly influenced its present form. The word-initial "zdr"-cluster appears both in Slavic loanwords, like zdravăn ("strong") and a zdrobi ("to crush"), and in words of unknown origin, like a zdruncina ("to shake") and a zdrăngăni ("to tinkle"). Most linguists attribute the pre-ioticization of some Romanian wordsthe appearance of the semi-vowel "j" before a world-initial "e"to contacts with speakers of Proto-Slavic. Pre-ioticization can only be detected in eight forms of the verb a fi ("to be") and in four personal pronouns, but three archaic demonstratives also displayed this phonetic change. Linguist Grigore Nandriș argues that pre-ioticization can hardly be attributed to Slavic influence, because the Latin e vowel had transformed into a diphthong long before the first Slavic loanwords appeared in Common Romanian. Palatalization of consonants before the vowel "i" is also attributed to Slavic influence by a number of scholars, but others maintain that it developed internally. The palatalization of the last consonant of masculine nouns and of verbs before "i" ending is a prominent example of this development: for instance, the last consonant of the Romanian word for coin (ban) changes from "n" to "ɲ" in plural (bani). The majority of specialists agree that the consonant "h" was alien to Common Romanian, but Slavicisms such as duh ("spirit") from *duxŭ, and hrean ("horseradish") from *xrĕnŭenabled its appearance in Romanian. In contrast to this view, Nandriș writes that certain Arumanian and dialectical Daco-Romanian terms show that the consonant "f" developed into "h" before the disintegration of Common Romanian (for instance, the Aromanian and dialectical Daco-Romanian word for iron, h'er descends from ferrum). Linguist Graham Mallinson emphasizes that the consonant occurs in Romanian in positions alien to