Dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics,
dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonant or vowel sounds in a word become less similar. For example, when one /r/ sound occurs before another in the middle of a word in rhotic dialects of English, the first tends to drop out, as in "beserk" for
berserk, "supprise" for
surprise, "paticular" for
particular, and "govenor" for
governor – this does not affect the pronunciation of
government, which has only one /r/, but English
government tends to be pronounced "goverment", dropping out the first n. One of the contexts where phonetic dissimilation may take place is where one language borrows a word from another language. An example is the English
colonel, which is now standardly pronounced "cornel" in English as a result of dissimilation, while the parent word in French and Italian is pronounced "colonel".