There is no epenthesis from a historical perspective since the a-t is derived from Latin habet ('he has'), and so the t is the original third-person verb inflection.
A complex example of epenthesis is massao (真っ青（まっさお）, 'deep blue, ghastly pale'), from ma- (真〜（ま〜）, 'pure, complete') + ao (青（あお）, 'blue').
It exhibits epenthesis on both morphemes: ma- (真〜（ま〜）) → ma'- (真っ〜（まっ〜）, (gemination of following consonant)) is common (occurring before a consonant), and ao (青（あお）) → sao (青（さお）) occurs only in the example; it can be analyzed as maao → masao (intervocalic) → massao; akin to kirisame (霧雨（きりさめ）, 'drizzle, light rain') from kiri (霧（きり）, 'fog, mist') + ame (雨（あめ）, 'rain').
For example, in the Gallo-Romance languages, a prop schwa /ə/ was added when final non-open vowels were dropped leaving /Cr/ clusters at the end, e.g. Latin nigrum '(shiny) black' > *[ˈnegro] > Old French negre /ˈnegrə/ 'black' (thus avoiding the impermissible /negr/, cf.
Similarly as above, a vowel may be inserted in the middle of a word to resolve an impermissible word-final consonant cluster.
In the development of Old English, Proto-Germanic *akraz 'field, acre' would have ended up with an impermissible /kr/ final cluster (*æcr), so it was resolved by inserting an /e/ before the rhotic consonant: æcer (cf.
Vowel insertion in the middle of a word can be observed in the history of the Slavic languages, which had a preference for open syllables in medieval times.
An example of this is the Proto-Slavic form *gordŭ 'town', in which the East Slavic languages inserted an epenthetic copy vowel to open the closed syllable, resulting in городъ (gorodŭ), which became город (gorod) in modern Russian and Ukrainian.
Other Slavic languages used metathesis for the vowel and the syllable-final consonant, producing *grodŭ in this case, as seen in Polish gród, Old Church Slavonic градъ gradŭ, Serbo-Croatian grad and Czech hrad.
In Spanish, as a phonetic detail, it is usual to find a schwa vowel in sequences of a consonant followed by a flap.
In the Western Romance languages, a prothetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with /s/ and another consonant, e.g. Latin spatha 'two-edged sword, typically used by cavalry' becomes the normal word for 'sword' in Romance languages with an inserted /e/: Spanish/Portuguese espada, Catalan espasa, Old French espede > modern épée (see also espadon 'swordfish').
French in fact presents three layers in the vocabulary in which initial vowel epenthesis is or is not applied, depending on the time a word came into the language: Similarly, at some point in the Proto-Armenian language and Classical Armenian, the prothetic vowel ե was placed at the beginning of the word before the sound ր, leading to words like երախ ('animal mouth', erax) from Iranian rax ('animal mouth'), or երազ ('dream', eraz) from Iranian raz ('mystery').
Languages use various vowels, but schwa is quite common when it is available: Epenthesis most often occurs within unfamiliar or complex consonant clusters.
Some apparent occurrences of epenthesis, however, have a separate cause: the pronunciation of nuclear as nucular (/ˈn(j)ukjəlɚ/) in some North American dialects arises out of analogy with other -cular words (binocular, particular, etc.)
In colloquial registers of Brazilian Portuguese, [i] is sometimes inserted between consonant clusters except those with /l/ (atleta), /ɾ/ (prato) or syllable-ending /s/ (pasta; note syllable-final /s/ is pronounced [ʃ] in a number of dialects).
Some dialects also use [e], which is deemed as stereotypical of people from lower classes, such as those arriving from rural flight in internal migrations to cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and São Paulo.
)[5] Lojban, a constructed language that seeks logically-oriented grammatical and phonological structures, uses a number of consonant clusters in its words.
Since it is designed to be as universal as possible, it allows a type of anaptyxis called "buffering" to be used if a speaker finds a cluster difficult or impossible to pronounce.
A vowel sound that is nonexistent in Lojban (usually /ɪ/ as in 'hit') is added between two consonants to make the word easier to pronounce.