Dissimilation
Dissimilation, in the context of
phonology, is a phenomenon whereby similar
consonant sounds in a
word have a tendency to become different over time, so as to ease pronunciation.
*
Latin **
medidies ("noon", "middle of the day") gradually changed into
meridies.
**The
suffix -alis also switched to
-aris when the root word contained an /l/.
*
German**What is written "chs" and pronounced [ks] in modern German was originally a sequence of two fricatives (/xs/) that dissimilated. The original pronunciation is found in derived words:
sechs ("six") is , but
sechzehn ("sixteen") is
