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Why no elisions in Spanish? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 9 of 17 23 June 2010 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
The missing s before r is also common in Standard Peninsular Spanish and northern dialects where the s-es are not normally dropped or aspirated. 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 10 of 17 23 June 2010 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes - I've heard it on national (rather than local) Spanish TV and, of course, Assimil Spanish is Standard Peninsular Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5530 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 11 of 17 24 June 2010 at 4:57am | IP Logged | |||||
Excuse me, I'm afraid that, I haven't fully grasped the point why "la artista" cannot be elided as "l'artista" (no doubt "la'rtista" is absolutely incorrect). Does the stress of "l'artista" sound different from that of "la artista" ? 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 12 of 17 24 June 2010 at 6:41am | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by johntm93 on 24 June 2010 at 7:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 13 of 17 24 June 2010 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not an expert on the history of Spanish orthography, so I may be out to lunch on this. But to my perception the orthography of Spanish reflects the phonetic word-initial marking that bares no resemblance to the kind of blending that occurs in French. The Spanish sequences"la artista" or "se está" are not comparable to the French "l'artiste" or "s'est" where the blending is total.
Of course, it should be pointed out that it is for this very reason of awkward phonetic sequences that we have rules that provide for "el agua" and "el alma", "uno u otro" and "rico e inteligente" In French, the situation is quite different because the words do totally blend together and we'll have forms like "l'eau" and "l'âme". Interestingly enough, French has something similar to Spanish in that adjectives ending in -eau will change to -el before masculine nouns starting with a vowel to avoid an awkward phonetic sequence. For example, "un bel homme", "un nouvel ami" and "un bel habit". As an aside that is probably unrelated to the preceding topic, it should be pointed out that French also exhibits the phenomenon of liaison whereby there is a mandatory or optional blending of the final consonant of a word with the initial vowel of the following word. For example, "les enfants" will be pronounced as "les-z-enfants" and "pas encore" becomes "pas-z-encore". It is quite a complex system with some very arcane rules that wreak havoc on foreigners reading French out aloud. One of my favourites examples is "quand il est arrivé" that is pronounced "quand-t-il est-t-arrivé. Edited by s_allard on 24 June 2010 at 7:23pm 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 14 of 17 24 June 2010 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Because... Even if the sound does reduce down to a single A (and as you've seen, it appears that this is not the case)... In French, how do we know that "lartiste" is "l'artiste" and not "la'rtiste"? Because in elisions with other vowels we can see categorically that it is the A at the end of the first word is gone. "l'ordure" "l'indienne" etc. There is no such evidence within Spanish that would tell you which A is lost. 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 15 of 17 25 June 2010 at 8:36am | IP Logged | |||||
Your original post related to orthography, so even if we found some pocket of Spanish speakers that did, it wouldn't be written that way - in contrast with French. ..and regarding the long "a" sound, if we take a phrase like va a hacer, I'm not convinced that one of those "a"s wouldn't be elided. Edited by Andy E on 25 June 2010 at 8:36am 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 16 of 17 25 June 2010 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
This would not happen in a standard educated speech. If you drop one of the "a"s it becomes "va a ser", or "va hacer". But, of course, in informal speech, you will hear everything. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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