Paragoge pærəˈɡoʊdʒiː, adj. paragogic pærəˈɡɒdʒɪk, is the addition of a sound to the end of a word. Often, this is due to nativization

Nativization

Nativization is the process whereby a language gains native speakers. This happens necessarily where a second language used by adult parents becomes the native language of their children...

. It is a type of epenthesis

Epenthesis

In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....

, most commonly vocalic epenthesis.

Diachronic paragoge

Some languages have undergone paragoge as a sound change

Sound change

Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...

, so that modern forms are longer than the historical forms they are derived from. Italian sono 'I am' from Latin SUM is an example. Sometimes, as here, the paragogic vowel is an echo vowel

Echo vowel

In speech, an echo vowel is a vowel that repeats the final vowel in a word. For example, in Chumash, when a word ends with a glottal stop and comes at the end of an intonation unit, the final vowel is repeated after the glottal stop, but is whispered and faint, as in for "arrow" . In Rukai , echo...

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Paragoge in loanwords

Languages that do not allow words to end in certain or any consonants will add a dummy vowel to the end of loanword

Loanword

A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...

s from other languages that include a forbidden final consonant. For example, English rack becomes Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

 räkki and Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 rakku. Similarly, Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

 ‘araq ("water of life") became raki in Modern Greek

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...

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