Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words. It occurs particularly prominently in Sanskrit phonology, hence its naming with a word from that language, but most languages have it. Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest language unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... The Sanskrit language (Skt. ...

• Internal sandhi features the alteration of sounds within words at morpheme boundaries, as in sympathy (syn- + pathy).
• External sandhi refers to changes found at word boundaries, such as in the pronunciation [tɛm bʊks] for ten books, or the Finnish inter-word geminates (loppukahdennus), e.g. nyt se → nysse "now it", or hernekeitto → hernekkeitto "pea soup".

The French term liaison is a kind of external sandhi. This article should be translated from material at fr:Liaison. ...

While it may be extremely common in speech, it is typically ignored in spelling, as is the case in English and Finnish. External sandhi effects can sometimes become morphologized (i.e. apply only in certain morphological and syntactic environments) and, over time, turn into consonant mutations. Jump to: navigation, search Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ... Jump to: navigation, search Syntax, originating from the Greek words συν (sun, meaning ‘together’) and ταξις (taxis, meaning sequence/order), can be described as the study of the rules, or patterned relations that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. ... Consonant mutation is the phenomenon in which a consonant in a word is changed according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment. ...

Most tonal languages have tone sandhi, in which the tones of words alter in complicated ways. For example: Mandarin has four tones: a high monotone, a rising tone, a falling-rising tone, and a falling tone. In the common greeting ní hǎo, both words would normally have the falling rising tone. However, this is difficult to say, so the tone on nǐ mutates into ní. This article or section uses Ruby annotation. ... Tone sandhi refers to tone manipulation rules governing the pronunciation of tonal languages. ... Jump to: navigation, search Mandarin (Traditional: 北方話, Simplified: 北方话, Hanyu Pinyin: BÄ›ifānghuà [listen â–¶(?)], lit. ...

External links

• online tool to perform and dissolve Sanskrit Sandhi