Pre-occlusion is a phonological process, involving the insertion of a very short plosive consonant before a sonorant consonant. In Manx

Manx language

Manx , also known as Manx Gaelic, and as the Manks language, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, historically spoken by the Manx people. Only a small minority of the Island's population is fluent in the language, but a larger minority has some knowledge of it...

, this applies to stressed monosyllabic words (i.e. words one syllable long), and is also found in Cornish

Cornish language

Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...

 on certain stressed syllables. The inserted consonant is homorganic with the following sonorant, which means it has the same place of articulation

Place of articulation

In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...

. Long vowels are often shortened before preoccluded sounds. In transcription, pre-occluding consonants in final position are typically written with a superscripted letter in Manx and in Cornish.

Examples in Manx include: → [ᵇm]: /t̪roːm/ → [t̪roᵇm] "heavy" → [ᵈl]: /ʃuːl/ → [ʃuːᵈl] "walking" → [ᵈn]: /kʲoːn/ → [kʲoᵈn] "head" → [ᵈʲnʲ]: /eːnʲ/ → [eːᵈʲnʲ], [e<ᵈʲnʲ] "birds" → [ᶢŋ]: /luŋ/ → [luᶢŋ] "ship"

In Cornish, pre-occlusion mostly affects the reflexes of older geminate/fortis /m/, intrinsically geminated in Old Cornish, and /nn/ (or /N/ depending on preferred notation). It also arises in a few cases where the combination /n+j/ was apparently re-interpreted as /nnʲ/.

Examples in Cornish

Cornish language

Cornish is a Brythonic Celtic language and a recognised minority language of the United Kingdom. Along with Welsh and Breton, it is directly descended from the ancient British language spoken throughout much of Britain before the English language came to dominate...

: → [ᵇm]: [mæᵇm] "mother" → [bm]: [ˈhɛbmɐ] "this" → [ᵈn]: [pɛᵈn] "head" → [dn]: [ˈpɛdnɔ(ʊ)] "heads"
In Faroese

Faroese language

Faroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...

, pre-occlusion also occurs, as in kallar [ˈkadlaɹ] 'you call, he calls', seinna [ˈsaiːdna] 'latter'. A similar feature occurs in Icelandic

Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...

, where the pre-occluding consonant is voiceless, as in galli [ˈkatlɪ] ('error'); sæll [ˈsaitl̥], seinna [ˈseitna]; Spánn [ˈspautn̥].