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Outside things like contractions (can't, won't) and word combinations (smoke + fog = smog), which take out letters wholesale, I'm looking for the phrase like an Orange, that seems to have started off as the Spanish: una naranja, and with a bit of change, where the "n" seems to have migrated from it to the beginning of the word to the "a" to make the English phrase "an aranja," which has been bastardized to make our spelling of orange.

Are there any other examples of this type of thing?

Jesse Cohoon
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    'Bastardized'? I think you mean, adapted to the English writing system. Anyway, it seems to have entered Middle English from Old French orenge so the adaptation wasn't as great as you suggest. – Gaston Ümlaut Jul 03 '16 at 01:34
  • I remember the German term Sandhi-Verschiebung for this phenomenon. The term is quite rare and I have not encountered an English equivalent or translation for it. Note that it can shift the word boundary in both dierections. – Sir Cornflakes Jul 04 '16 at 09:37

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There are many of these in English, in both directions: adder, apron were once 'nadder' and 'napron'. More examples and explanation on this Wikipedia page on 'Rebracketing', under 'Examples of false splitting' ('In English').

Jeremy Needle
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There are some examples in different languages in Rebracketing in Wikipedia.

Incidentally, this has absolutely nothing to do with "letters". It happened, in probably every case, in the spoken language, and quite likely among people who were illiterate.

Colin Fine
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