crumb. Where the final cluster occurred, this was reduced to (the him-hymn merger), as in column, autumn, damn, solemn. (Compare French , where the cluster has been reduced to .) Both sounds are nonetheless still pronounced before vowels in certain derivatives, such as autumnal, damnation, solemnity. Generalized final cluster reduction General reduction of final consonant clusters occurs in African American Vernacular English and Caribbean English. The new final consonant may be slightly lengthened as an effect. Examples are: {| |- |test ||→ tes' || ||→ |- |desk ||→ des' || ||→ |- |hand ||→ han' || ||→ |- |send ||→ sen' || ||→ |- |left ||→ lef''' || ||→ |- |wasp ||→ was' || ||→ |} The plurals of test and desk may become tesses and desses by the same rule that gives plural messes from singular mess.HLW: Word Forms: Processes: English AccentsEbonics Notes and Discussion Medial cluster reductions When a consonant cluster ending in a stop is followed by another consonant or cluster in the next syllable, the final stop in the first syllable is often elided. This may happen within words or across word boundaries. Examples of stops that will often be elided in this way include the in postman and the in cold cuts or band saw. Historically, similar reductions have taken place before syllabic consonants in certain words, leading to the silent in words like castle and listen. This change took place around the 17th century. In the word often, the sound later came to be re-inserted by some speakers as a spelling pronunciation. An earlier reduction that took place in early Middle English was the change of to (the sent-cent merger). This led to the modern sound of soft . Consonant insertions Prince–prints merger For many speakers, an epenthetic is inserted in the final cluster , making it identical or very similar to the cluster . For example, the words prince and prints have come to be homophones or nearly so. The epenthesis is a natural consequence of the transition from the nasal to the fricative ; if the raising of the soft palate (which converts a nasal to an oral sound) is completed before the release of the tongue tip (which enables a fricative sound), an intervening stop naturally results. The merger of and is not necessarily complete, however; the duration of the epenthetic in has been found to be often shorter (and the