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Why no elisions in Spanish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5530 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 1 of 17 23 June 2010 at 7:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm curious to know why there aren't any elisions in Spanish orthography?
For example, in French, ce est --- c'est, la heure --- l'heure, je ai --- j'ai, que il --- qu'il, le espagnol--- l'espagnol, de invier --- d'invier, And in Italian, such as l'albero, senz'altro, bell'amica, grand'uomo, quest’orso, l'ho vista, d'Italia, gl'impedirono, un'emergenza d'amore. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5326 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 2 of 17 23 June 2010 at 7:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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They have "al" whick it a and el and "del" which is de and el.
I don't know if those are elisions, though. Can a contraction be an elision? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5332 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 3 of 17 23 June 2010 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That's because Spanish has strong vowels that should always be pronounced clearly.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 17 23 June 2010 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There are no elisions in Spanish orthography because there are no elisions in Spanish speech... depending on your definition.
The only thing normally referred to as "elision" is where the a vowel meets the same vowel. The example about.com gives is "la artista". If you call that elision, which A has been dropped? Is it "la 'rtista" or "l' artista"? If it's impossible to say which sound has been lost, it's probably safer to say that the two sounds have merged. Both sounds are there, although inseparable, so both letters are needed. Edit: By contrast, in French and Italian we know which vowel has been lost even when both are the same, because we can compare it to the case of two different vowels, where it is consistently the one at the end of the first word that goes. (Except possibly in the case of future and historic tenses in Italian... I'm not good enough at Italian to know whether there's any elision after a stressed terminal vowel.) Edited by Cainntear on 23 June 2010 at 3:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5332 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 5 of 17 23 June 2010 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't think there is elision in 'la artista' -- the two 'a' are not really merged into one. Although they are pronounced with a single emission of voice, they are not pronounced as it were a single 'a', but they are merged into a long vowel (that has some kind of effect to mark the boundary).
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| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7102 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 17 23 June 2010 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
One elision I've definitely heard in Spanish speech is the dropping of the "s" sound when it's followed by an "r"- in the word Israel for example**. Other examples are elision of "s" in syllable-final or word-final position - although this is sometimes aspiration rather than elision. I hear this in Andalucía all the time. **Edit: I'm pretty certain there's an example of this in the audio for Using Spanish although I can't find it at the moment. Edited by Andy E on 23 June 2010 at 8:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 17 23 June 2010 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well I had considered adding "except in certain dialects" but I thought it was unnecessary. I've heard it said that many Argentinians elide vowels like the Italians do, and certainly tango music seems to confirm this. However, as for the "missing" S, it is technically merely "reduced" or "lenited" -- it is only in the most extreme dialects that it is completely lost. There's a continuum across southern Spain -- in Murcia, it's a hhh sound. Someone from northern Spain might imitate a Murciano by saying "epaña" and "gracia", but what they're really saying is "ehhpaña" and "graciahh", but the northerners don't consciously hear the hh because it's not a meaningful to them. As you head westwards, the hh starts to die an you're left with a "hiatus" -- a pause, a brief break in the airflow when the speaker stops breathing out, so you've got "e.paña" and "gracia." I recall hearing that there's a small region somewhere in Andalucía that has completely lost those Ses, but I can't remember where, and I can't remember who said it, so I wouldn't be able to vouch for its accuracy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7102 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 8 of 17 23 June 2010 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oh... it's always necessary otherwise you get some smart*rse like me turning up and posting :-) (my comment on "s"+ "r" remains ,however, since I'm not sure it relates to "extreme" dialects but merely the difficulty of hitting the trill after an "s" which seems to affect some people and not others - the Assimil example I was thinking of is on the lines of ...es real... or something like that)
I'll bow to your better knowledge on this - to my untrained ear it merely seems missing or aspirated.
I'd be interested to know where if you ever remember. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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