a historical perspective since the is derived from Latin ('he has'), and so the is the original third-person verb inflection. However, it is correct to call it epenthesis when viewed synchronically since the modern basic form of the verb is and so the psycholinguistic process is therefore the addition of to the base form. A similar example is the English indefinite article a, which becomes an before a vowel. It originated from Old English ("one, a, an"), which retained an n in all positions, so a diachronic analysis would see the original n disappearing except if a following vowel required its retention: an > a. However, a synchronic analysis, in keeping with the perception of most native speakers, would (equally correctly) see it as epenthesis: a > an. In Dutch, whenever the suffix (which has several meanings) is attached to a word already ending in -r, an additional is inserted in between. For example, the comparative form of the adjective ("sweet") is , but the comparative of ("sour") is and not the expected **. Similarly, the agent noun of ("to sell") is ("salesperson"), but the agent noun of ("to perform") is ("performer"). Variable rule In English, a stop consonant is often added as a transitional sound between the parts of a nasal + fricative sequence: English hamster often pronounced with an added p sound, GA: or RP: English warmth often pronounced with an added p sound, GA: or RP: English fence often pronounced Poetic device Latin "remnants, survivors" (accusative plural) > poetic The three short syllables in do not fit into dactylic hexameter because of the dactyl's limit of two short syllables so the first syllable is lengthened by adding another l. However, the pronunciation was often not written with double ll, and may have been the normal way of pronouncing a word starting in rel- rather than a poetic modification. In Japanese A limited number of words in Japanese use epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. An example is the word , a compound of haru and ame in which an is added to separate the final of haru and the initial of ame. That is a synchronic analysis. As for a diachronic (historical) analysis, since epenthetic consonants are not used regularly in modern Japanese, the epenthetic could be from Old Japanese. It is also possible that Old Japanese /ame2/ was once pronounced */same2/; the would then be not epenthetic