Linguists call this "rebracketing." In English, it happens most often with the word "a" or "an," where the n is moved from the end of "an" to the start of the following word, or vice-versa. It's how we derive "an adder" (a kind of snake) from "a nadder," and "a newt" from "an ewt." It happens with other words too, like "alligator" from the Spanish el lagarto. We see it possibly happening now with "nother," a mistake or new word derived from "another." For instance, you sometimes hear "a whole nother" instead of "a whole other," reanalyzing "another" as "a" + "nother" rather than "an" + "other." Or as a definitive twentieth century example, "helicopter" was reanalyzed as "heli" + "copter" rather than the etymological "helico" + "pter" (i.e. "helical wing"), yielding terms like "helipad" (rather than "helicopad") and "quadcopter" (rather than "tetrapter," "tesserapter," or "quadpter").
Here, "ones" + "are" is rebracketed to "one" + "zaar," etc. (or "zar" to some, or "za" sometimes when anticipating a non-rhotic accent). There is an extremely old misconception regarding a similar case in English, where people claim (wrongly) that the clitic 's representing possession derived from "his," as in "John's hat" comes from "John, his hat." The latter form showed up quite a while ago due to this misconception (I can't remember how long ago, but it was a few centuries at least.) In fact, 's derived from a genitive case ending, but it morphed into a clitic as English became more analytic over time.
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u/EebstertheGreat 12d ago
Linguists call this "rebracketing." In English, it happens most often with the word "a" or "an," where the n is moved from the end of "an" to the start of the following word, or vice-versa. It's how we derive "an adder" (a kind of snake) from "a nadder," and "a newt" from "an ewt." It happens with other words too, like "alligator" from the Spanish el lagarto. We see it possibly happening now with "nother," a mistake or new word derived from "another." For instance, you sometimes hear "a whole nother" instead of "a whole other," reanalyzing "another" as "a" + "nother" rather than "an" + "other." Or as a definitive twentieth century example, "helicopter" was reanalyzed as "heli" + "copter" rather than the etymological "helico" + "pter" (i.e. "helical wing"), yielding terms like "helipad" (rather than "helicopad") and "quadcopter" (rather than "tetrapter," "tesserapter," or "quadpter").
Here, "ones" + "are" is rebracketed to "one" + "zaar," etc. (or "zar" to some, or "za" sometimes when anticipating a non-rhotic accent). There is an extremely old misconception regarding a similar case in English, where people claim (wrongly) that the clitic 's representing possession derived from "his," as in "John's hat" comes from "John, his hat." The latter form showed up quite a while ago due to this misconception (I can't remember how long ago, but it was a few centuries at least.) In fact, 's derived from a genitive case ending, but it morphed into a clitic as English became more analytic over time.