English Examples of elision in English: Most elisions in English are not mandatory, but they are used in common practice and even sometimes in more formal speech. This applies to nearly all the examples in the above table. However, these types of elisions are rarely shown in modern writing and never shown in formal writing. In formal writing, the words are written the same whether or not the speaker would elide them, but in many plays and classic American literature, words are often written with an elision to demonstrate accent: Other examples, such as
him and
going to shown in the table above, are generally used only in fast or informal speech. They are still generally written as is unless the writer intends to show the dialect or speech patterns of the speaker. The third type of elision is in common contractions, such as ''can't
, isn't
, or I'm
. The apostrophes represent the sounds that are removed and are not spoken but help the reader to understand that it is a contraction and not a word of its own. These contractions used to be written out when transcribed (i.e. cannot
, is not
, I am
) even if they were pronounced as a contraction, but now they are always written as a contraction so long as they are spoken that way. However, they are by no means mandatory and a speaker or writer may choose to keep the words distinct rather than contract them either as a stylistic choice, when using formal register, to make meaning clearer to children or non-native English speakers, or to emphasize a word within the contraction (e.g. I
am going!'') In
non-rhotic accents of English, is dropped unless it's followed by a vowel, making
cheetah and
cheater completely homophonous. In non-rhotic accents spoken outside of North America, many instances of correspond to in North American English as and are used instead of .
Finnish The consonant in the
partitive case ending elides when it is surrounded by two short vowels except when the first of the two vowels involved is
paragoge (added to the stem). Otherwise, it stays. For example, → , → , but → (not a short vowel), → (consonant stem), → (paragogic on a consonant stem).
French Elision of unstressed vowels (usually ) is common in the French language and, in some cases, must be indicated orthographically with an
apostrophe. Elision of vowel and consonant sounds was also an important phenomenon in the phonological evolution of French. For example,
s following a
vowel and preceding another consonant regularly elided, with
compensatory lengthening of the vowel. • Latin → Old French → Modern French • Latin → Old French → Modern French • Latin → Old French → Modern French
German Nouns and adjectives that end with unstressed "el" or "er" have the "e" elided when they are declined or a suffix follows. ex. becomes , , etc., and + becomes . The final of a noun is also elided when another noun or suffix is concatenated onto it: + becomes . In both of the above cases, the represents a
schwa.
Icelandic Elision () is common in
Icelandic. There are a variety of rules for its occurrence, but the most notable is the loss of trailing consonants in common particles as well as the merger of similar vowel sounds. For example, the ubiquitous (verb) structure ("I am verb-ing") becomes transformed to (verb); the full particles is spoken only when a person is sounding the sentence out word by word. Another noteworthy and extremely common example along this line includes the phrase ("really?"), which is pronounced as . A common example of internal consonant loss in Icelandic is ("here you go", "please"), pronounced (the hidden sound is unrelated to the elision and occurs when a or precedes ). Another special case of elision is the loss of from the start of ("this", "that"), which is sometimes pronounced ( (what is this?) -> ). The pronunciation of the full word tends to lay emphasis on it ("What is
this?") while the elision of the word leads to its deemphasis ("
What is this?"). The loss of the in is similar to how can be lost in "that" and "this" when asking a question and speaking swiftly in English.
Irish Elision is found in the Ulster dialect of Irish, particularly in final position. , for example, while pronounced in the Conamara dialect, is pronounced in Ulster. is also elided when it begins intervocalic consonant clusters. is pronounced ; is pronounced .
Japanese Elision is extremely common in the pronunciation of the
Japanese language. In general, a high vowel ( or ) that appears in a low-pitched syllable between two voiceless consonants is devoiced and often deleted outright. However, unlike French or English, Japanese does not often show elision in writing. The process is purely phonetic and varies considerably depending on the dialect or level of formality. A few examples (slightly exaggerated; apostrophes added to indicate elision): :松下さんはいますか？
Matsushita-san wa imasu ka? ("Is Mr. Matsushita in?") :Pronounced: ''matsush'tasanwa imas'ka'' : :失礼します
Shitsurei shimasu ("Excuse me") :Pronounced: ''sh'tsureishimas' '' : Gender roles also influence elision in Japanese. It is considered masculine to elide, especially the final
u of the polite verb forms (
-masu,
desu), but women are traditionally encouraged to do the opposite. However, excessive elision is generally associated with lower
prestige, and inadequate elision is seen as overly fussy or old-fashioned. Some
nonstandard dialects, such as
Satsuma-ben, are known for their extensive elision. It is common for successive o sounds to be reduced to a single o sound, as is frequently encountered when the particle を (wo/o) is followed by the beautifying or honorific お (o).
Latin Latin poetry featured frequent elision, with syllables being dropped to fit the meter or for
euphony. Words ending in vowels would elide with the following word if it started with a vowel or h; words ending with -m would also be elided in the same way (this is called ecthlipsis). In writing, unlike in Greek, this would not be shown, with the normal spelling of the word represented. For instance, line 5 of
Virgil's
Aeneid is written as "", even though it would be pronounced as "". It is generally thought that elision in Latin poetry came from ordinary Latin pronunciation. However, at some points in speech where elision was standard in poetry, such as at the end of sentences, there was no elision in prose. Around 30 B.C., there was a sharp decline in the amount of elision. Later revived to a varying degree during the Silver Age, it then declined again. Other examples of elision in Latin literature include: • Virgil's
Aeneid Book I, Line 3: " " is pronounced " ", where " " comprises three long syllables, or one and a half
spondees. • Virgil's
Aeneid Book I, Line 11: " " is pronounced " ", where " " comprises three long syllables and two short syllables. •
Ovid's
Metamorphoses Book III, Line 557: " " is pronounced " ", where " " comprises two short syllables and a long syllable. • Ovid's
Amores Book III, Poem VI, Line 101: " " is pronounced " ". •
Catullus 73 line 6, "", has elision connecting the final six words together. •
Caecilius Statius's
Ephesio (quoted in Cicero's
Cato Maior de Senectute 25) has the line: "" where there is elision between every word. In a study of elision in Latin poetry, J. Soubiran argues that "elision" would better be called "
synaloepha", and the process understood as a merging of syllables, in most cases, rather than the loss of one.
Maori Medial /t/ is sometimes dropped: the prefix
Ngāti (from
ngā āti "descendants") applied to
tribes can also be realised as
Ngāi,
motu ("island") can also be realised as
mou (e.g.
Moutohorā, lit. 'Whale Island').
Malayalam Dropping sounds in connected speech by native speakers is very common in this language from
Kerala, southern
India. For example,
entha becomes
ntha and
ippol becomes
ippo.
Spanish The change of
Latin into the
Romance languages included a significant amount of elision, especially
syncope (loss of medial vowels).
Spanish has these examples: • from Latin • from Latin (through ) • from Latin (with
dissimilation of
-nm- to
-lm-) • from Latin (with
lenition of
f- to
h- to ∅, dissimilation of
-mn- to
-mr- and then
epenthesis of
-mr- to
-mbr-) In addition, speakers often employ
crasis or elision between two words to avoid a
hiatus caused by vowels: the choice of which to use depends upon whether or not the vowels are identical. This is referred to as enlace or
synalepha, and is especially common in poetry and songs. It is not necessarily indicated in writing, but often is in hymn music. It can appear as a
breve below or an
underscore between the adjacent words, e.g. "por-que ̮en-ton-ces" or "por-que_en-ton-ces". A frequent informal use is the elision of in the past participle suffix , pronouncing as . The elision of in is considered even more informal, but both elisions common in
Andalusian Spanish. Thus, the Andalusian for ("lament") has entered Standard Spanish as a term for a special feature of
Flamenco singing. Similar distinctions are made with the words and as contracted versions of the literal translations for dancer and singer exclusively used for Flamenco, compared to the and of standard Spanish. The perceived vulgarity of the silent may lead to
hypercorrections like
* for (
cod) or * for .
Tamil Tamil has a set of rules for elision. They are categorised into classes based on the
phoneme where elision occurs:
Urdu In Pakistan, elision has become very common in speech. Commonly used words have single consonants or syllables removed in casual speech and it is becoming more acceptable in formal settings due to an increasing understandability and use. Although not seen when writing in the Urdu script (Nastaleeq), it is often seen in Roman Urdu (Latin alphabet) as the latter is more similar to vernacular Urdu. Most elisions occur by removing a vowel or the consonant /h/ or a combination of the two. Some widely used examples are:
(The difference between the elision May and the original word Main is the lack of nasalization at the end in the former.) In sentences, they may appear as:
Kya tum paṛ ray o? ("Are you studying?") instead of "
Kya tum paṛh rahay ho?" Variations are also common where some individuals may prefer to pronounce a complete word such as "
paṛh" while shortening the rest, depending on the preference of the person, their dialect, or their accent.
Welsh Elision is a major feature of
Welsh, found commonly in verb forms, such as in the following examples: • - 'Do you like the coffee?' (The definite article is always after a vowel even when the next word begins with a consonant, e.g. - 'the cat is scratching', but - 'the black cat'. • - 'Where is the town?' • - 'I am reading' Elision of word-final is almost always found in
spoken Welsh to the point where the words are spelt with optional final in words like and has been eradicated from the inflected prepositions: , not * - 'on me', etc. These always retain their final in the
literary register, however. Welsh also displays elision of initial syllables in singular/plural or collective/singulative pairs where the plural or singulative becomes longer than two syllables. This, however, is now restricted to specific nouns and is not productive. E.g. - 'sock / socks' where the initial has been lost in the plural; - 'birds / a bird' where the initial has been lost in the singulative. ==Related areas==