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In searching for the reason for the message -> messenger shift, I came across the theory of the 'parasitic n.' Essentially, the idea is that during the post-Norman Conquests period in England, borrowed words from French containing nasalized vowels preceding a 'g' would be misheard by English speakers as containing velar or alveolar nasals, and as such were written or repeated containing an erroneous n.
Are there other instances of such 'parasitic phonemes' in the history of English?
epenthesis, or more specifically, excrescence
WP:
In phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/; Ancient Greek: ἐπένθεσις) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. … excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, …
"The history of English provides examples [of epenthesis] like the development of aemtig into empty, with epenthetic p, and of þunor into thunder, with epenthetic d. Non-standard pronunciations include 'athalete' for athlete and 'fillum' for film,' with epenthetic vowels."
(R.L. Trask, A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology. Routledge, 1996)
Consonant epenthesis (…) arises in order to provide a more consonantal syllable coda. There are some words in English originally which ended in an alveolar nasal or an /s/ and which developed an epenthetic stop after the final segment. The result is that the syllable rhyme of such words shows a steady decrease in sonority from the nucleus to the right edge.
vowel – nasal: sound (< son)
fricative – stop: against (< againes)
It's helpful also to read on the related idea of Sandhi (Sanskrit: संधि saṃdhí 1 "joining") for the morphology.
Passage > Passenger
I believe this may constitute another instance of the "parasitic 'n' phoneme."
'nightingale' is supposed to have a parasitic n added ca. 13th century, which fits your theory, except that it seems to be from an older English word, not a French import. any ideas?
