Elision in the French language
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In
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, elision is the suppression of a final unstressed vowel (usually ) immediately before another word beginning with a vowel or a muted h. The term also refers to the orthographic convention by which the deletion of a vowel is reflected in writing, and indicated with an
apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one ...
.


Written French

In written French, elision (both phonetic and orthographic) is obligatory for the following words: *the definite articles and ** ("the boy"), ("the girl") ** + → ("the tree"), + → ("the church") *the subject pronouns and (when they occur before the verb) **. ("I sleep") . ("That would be great.") **. ("I slept.") . ("It was great.") **but: ? ("Did I imagine?"), ? ("Is that useful?") *the object pronouns , , , , and (when they occur before the verb) **. ("Jean shaves himself, sees her, phones me.") **. ("Jean shaved himself, saw her, phoned me.") **but: . ("Look at him one more time.") *the object pronouns when they occur after an imperative verb and before the pronoun or : ** . ("Put it, give me them, scram.") ** . ("Put it there, give me some, leave.") *the negative marker **. ("She isn't talking anymore.") **. ("She won't stop talking.") *the preposition **. ("Jean's father just left.") **. ("Albert's father just arrived.") * (which has many different functions) **. ("What are you saying? That Jean does nothing but eat.") **. ("What did you say? That we only had one more week left.") *The conjunction plus the pronouns and ** ("if she likes cats") ** ("if he/they like cats") Elision is indicated in the spelling of some compound words, such as "peninsula", "today", and "someone". At the beginnings of words, the
aspirated h In French spelling, aspirated "h" ( French: ''"h" aspiré'') is an initial silent letter that represents a hiatus at a word boundary, between the word's first vowel and the preceding word's last vowel. At the same time, the aspirated ''h'' st ...
forbids elision. Example: . The mute h, however, requires elision. Example: . Both types of "h" are silent regardless.


Informal French

Elision of the second-person singular subject pronoun , before the verbs beginning with a vowel or
mute h Muteness is a speech disorder in which a person lacks the ability to speak. Mute or the Mute may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Mute'' (2005 film), a short film by Melissa Joan Hart * ''Mute'' (2018 film), a scie ...
(silent h), and of the particle of negation , is very common in informal speech, but is avoided in careful speech and never used in formal writing: * . "You decided to visit them, you went to see the film, you were not there, I don't know." (careful speech) * T'as décidé de lui rendre visite, t'es allé voir le film, t'étais pas là, je sais pas. (informal speech)


See also

*
Liaison (French) In French, liaison () is the pronunciation of a linking consonant between two words in an appropriate phonetic and syntactic context. For example, the word ''les'' ('the') is pronounced , the word ''amis'' ('friends') is pronounced , but the ...
*
Elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
— broader discussion of elision in other languages


References

* Maurice Grevisse, ''
Le Bon Usage ''Le Bon Usage'' (, ''Good Usage''), informally called ''Le Grevisse'', is a descriptive book about French grammar first published in 1936 by Maurice Grevisse, and periodically revised since. It describes the usage of the French language, pr ...
'', 14th edition by André Goosse, de Boeck, 2007, {{ISBN, 978-2-8011-1404-9 French language Silent letters fr:Élision