Vowel epenthesis

Epenthesis is a common process in which successive segments are separated by an intervening segment. In English, this occurs with plural [s]. While a word like books is pronounced simply with the [s] morphology, a word like bus is pronounced with a schwa and an [s], "buses". This epenthetic schwa serves to break apart the [s] at the end of bus and the plural [s] as saying "two buss" is impossible. With non-native speakers, epenthesis works to break up a sequence of sounds that are difficult to pronounce because this sequence is inconsistent with the pattern of the speaker's native language. As many languages do not allow certain clusters (sequences of consonants), speakers tend to use vowel epenthesis to break these clusters up. An epenthetic vowel is inserted either between two segments or before the cluster, which breaks the cluster into two syllables.Typically, this happens with initial consonant clusters. Spanish 1 provides a good example.