The morphophonemic change that involves swapping sounds within a word is called

• A. Epenthesis
• B. Assimilation
• C. Metathesis
• D. Dissimilation

Answer: (C)

Metathesis is the process where sounds inside a word swap places. This rearrangement changes the order of the sounds without adding or removing any segments. A familiar example is pronouncing “ask” as “aks” in many dialects, or saying “spaghetti” as “pasghetti,” where the consonants switch positions. This is different from epenthesis, which would insert an extra sound (like a vowel) to ease pronunciation, from assimilation, where a sound changes to be more like a neighboring sound, or from dissimilation, where two similar sounds become less alike to simplify the pronunciation. In metathesis, the key idea is simply the rearrangement of existing sounds within the word.