The linguistic process of inserting a vowel sound within or between consonants to make a word easier to pronounce.
Greek ana- (back, again) + ptyx- (to fold or break); coined by 19th-century linguists to describe sound changes observed across language families.
This is why 'often' gets pronounced 'OF-ten' by many people, or why Latin 'schola' became Spanish 'escuela'—languages naturally insert vowels to prevent awkward consonant clusters from tying our tongues in knots.
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