Spanish
The most notable example is Chilean Spanish.
Forms of the verb estar ("to be") are often shortened by dropping the first syllable (as if the verb were *tar).
- Acá está. → Acá ta. ("Here it is", joking tone or baby-talk)
The preposition para ("for", "in order to") can be shortened to pa' (this sounds uneducated in most dialects):
- Pa' servirle. (lit. "To serve you", i. e. "At your service".)
- No es pa' cualquiera. ("It is not for anyone.")
The d in the final -ado of past participles is usually pronounced softly, and, in relaxed pronunciation, can disappear: Estoy cansado ("I am tired") is heard as Toy cansao. Doing so with the final -ido, as in *Toy perdío ("I am lost"), is perceived as more uneducated. This can lead to hypercorrections like *bacalado instead of bacalao ("cod").
The preposition de ("of") also tends to get shortened to e when the previous word ends in a vowel.
In many dialects, the very common phrase voy a + infinitive ("I'm going to..."), which shows the immediate future tense, is shortened: some people pronounce vua /bwa/, others via /bja/. This is quite common but also considered uneducated.
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.
The contractions:
- para + el = pal
- para + la = pala
- para + los = palos
- para + las = palas
- para + donde = paonde, pande
- para + allá = payá
- para + acá = pacá
Or the common pa'que from para que.
Read more about this topic: Relaxed Pronunciation
Famous quotes containing the word spanish:
“As the Spanish proverb says, “He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.” So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)