Relaxed pronunciation


Relaxed pronunciation is a phenomenon that happens when the syllables of common words are slurred together. It is almost always present in normal speech, in all natural languages but not in some constructed languages, such as Loglan or Lojban, which are designed so that all words are parsable.
Some shortened forms of words and phrases, such as contractions or weak forms can be considered to derive from relaxed pronunciations, but a phrase with a relaxed pronunciation is not the same as a contraction. In English, where contractions are common, they are considered part of the standard language and accordingly used in many contexts ; however, relaxed pronunciation is markedly informal in register. This is also sometimes reflected in writing: contractions have a standard written form, but relaxed pronunciations may not, outside of eye dialect.
Certain relaxed pronunciations occur only in specific grammatical contexts, the exact understanding of which can be complicated. See trace for some further info.

English

The following sections contain common words said with relaxed pronunciation in American English, along with pronunciations given in IPA, and a common written indication of this pronunciation where applicable:

''Of'', ''have'', and ''to''

The words of, to, and have all tend to elide to nothing more than a schwa in many common situations. This sometimes leads to spelling confusion, such as writing "I could of..." instead of "I could have..." or "I could've".
"Would" can also be contracted, which usually yields . The in "have" and "of" is usually retained before a vowel sound.

''You''

"You" tends to elide to . Softening of the preceding consonant also may occur:. This can also happen with other words that begin with . In some dialects, such as Australian English, this is not a relaxed pronunciation but compulsory: got you .
Examples of the Dutch as spoken in the Netherlands include:
Often, especially in Belgian Dutch, the -t at the end of the word is omitted.
A wide range of possible pronunciations can be found in the negatory 'nicht depending on the dialect region.
See also Synalepha

Russian

The most notable example in Russian language is the greeting здравствуйте, which is colloquially pronounced. Other examples include:
Contracted forms are usually found only in colloquial contexts, but they can occur in poetry.
For example, look at the verse from the Russian translation of Avesta :
"On a side of the chariot of Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, stand a thousand... arrows, with a golden mouth."
This contrasts with contracted forms found in colloquial speech in that it is used to keep the original rhythm. The previous verse has a literary form:
"On a side of the chariot of Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, stand a thousand bows well-made, with a string of cowgut''".

French

The phrase tu as is frequently elided to t'as and tu es to t'es.
The same with je suis to j'suis or ch'uis, and je sais pas to j'sais pas or ch'ais pas.
The expression, "Qu'est-ce que..." is little used in colloquial speech for forming the interrogative, but when it is, in very informal use, it is shortened:
"Qu'est-ce que tu veux ?" becomes...
"Qu'est-c'tu veux ?"
"Qu'est-ce que tu as dit?" becomes...
"Qu'est-c't'as dit?"
A more complex sentence, such as "il ne savait peut-être plus ce qu'il faisait", can become "i n'savait p'têt plus c'qui v'zait" , or even further relaxed, "i sa'ait têt' pu c'qui v'zait" .

Spanish

Forms of the verb estar are often shortened by dropping the first syllable.
Often, d will turn into its approximant, the Voiced dental fricative, which is "softer"; and when placed between two vowels it might disappear in relaxed pronunciation.
As such, the d in the final -ado of past participles can disappear: Estoy cansado is heard as Toy cansao; this is also applied to the final -ido, as in Me he perdido, which is heard as *Me perdío.
This phenomenon is often perceived as uncultured, and can lead to hypercorrections like *bacalado instead of bacalao.
Hiatus between two words will often lead to these merging, with del being the grammatically correct form of de el. If the merged word is small enough, it might be omitted entirely:
Some dialects like Andalusian Spanish lose the syllable-final s.
Since it is important as a mark of plurals, it is substituted with vowel opening.

Portuguese

Examples:
In some dialects, que is reduced to the "q" sound:
In Portugal, the mute 'e' and the final unstressed vowels are often elided:

Japanese

Japanese can undergo some vowel deletion or consonant mutation in relaxed speech. While these are common occurrences in the formation of some regular words, typically after the syllables ku or tsu, as in 学校 gakkō "school" or 出発 shuppatsu "departure", in rapid speech, these changes can appear in words that did not have them before, such as suizokkan for suizokukan 水族館 "aquarium."
Additionally, the syllables ra, ri, ru, re and ro sometimes become simply n or when they occur before another syllable beginning with n or d, and disappear entirely before syllabic n. This can happen within a word or between words, such as 分かんない wakannai "I dunno" for 分からない wakaranai "I don't know" or もう来てんだよ mō kite n da yo "they're already here" for もう来ているんだよ mō kite iru n da yo.
Relaxed pronunciation also makes use of several contractions.

Turkish

Examples:
In all of these cases, the pronounced length of the initial vowel is slightly extended, though in the case of "napıyon" the terminal vowel maintains its initial length or, if anything, is shortened.

Hindustani

In Hindustani, it is common to elide the sound /h/ ˂ہ˃/<ह> in normal speech. For example, آپ کہاں جا رہے ہیں/आप कहाँ जा रहे हैं āp kahā̃ jā rahe hãi will be pronounced آپ کاں جا رے ایں/आप काँ जा रे ऐं āp kā̃ jā re ãi.