Euphony

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<very drafty>

Euphony (literally “well-sounding-ness”) refers to the tendency of languages to make phonetic changes for ease of articulation. That is, we change, drop, or add sounds in words to make those words easier to pronounce.

For instance, instead of “a apple” we say “an apple,” adding /n/ between the vowels. Some dialects of English drop the /d/ from the word “handbag” and change /n/ to /m/, resulting in the pronunciation /hambag/, just because it’s easier to say that way.

When one sound becomes more like an adjacent sound, like when the /n/ in /hanbag/ becomes an /m/, that is called assimilation. There are rules that will help predict when assimilation occurs and how it looks…

<insert explanation>

<things with alpha privative or Ṇ becoming e.g. αν?>

In Greek, consonant clusters may be broken up with the addition of α to make the word pronounceable.

However, if the consonant cluster is made up of Merlin consonants (μ, ρ, λ, ν), δ is added instead: ἄνρα > ἄνδρα.

<then note again on assimilation of δ to β… αμβροσια…>