Elision is an important area in listening skills, as learners are often unable to hear elided words correctly, especially if they have little contact with native speakers. Word-counting and dictations are two activities that practise recognition, whilst at the production stage drilling elided forms such as contracted forms is common

Elision is very simply the omission of certain sounds in certain contexts. The most important occurrences of this phenomenon regard:  1)     Alveolar consonants /t/ and /d/ when ‘sandwiched’ between two consonants (CONS – t/d – CONS), e.g.

The next day….   /ðə ˈneks ˈdeɪ/

The last car…      /ðə ˈlɑ:s ˈkɑ:/

Hold the dog!  /ˈhəʊl ðə ˈdɒg/

Send Frank a card.     /sen ˈfræŋk ə ˈkɑ:d/ 

This can also take place within affricates /t§/ and /d½/ when preceded by a consonant, e.g. 

lunchtime /ˈlʌntʃtaɪm/   /ˈlʌnʃtaɪm/ 

strange days

/ˈstreɪndʒˈdeɪz/   

/ˈstreɪndʒˈdeɪz/ 

The phoneme /t/ is a fundamental part of the negative particle not, the possibility of it being elided makes the foreign students life more difficult. Consider the negative of can – if followed by a consonant the /t/ may easily disappear and the only difference between the positive and the negative is a different, longer vowel sound in the second: 

I can speak….    /aɪ kən ˈspi:k/ 

I can’t speak…  /aɪ ˈkɑ:n(t) ˈspi:k/ 

Note that when can’t is followed by a vowel, e.g. ‘I can’t  eat’, the /t/ is not elided.Can something similar happen to didn’t? 

2)     A second form involves the omission of the schwa /\/ before liquids /l/ and /r/, e.g.

secretary /ˈsekrət(ə)ri/

camera /ˈkæm(ə)rə/

memory /ˈmem(ə)ri/ In some cases this elision may be optional (dictionaries usually represent the optional sound in italics e.g. /ˈlʌnt ʃtaɪm/ , in others it is the norm.

Schwa elision in English

          One frequent reason why people who learn English as a foreign language sound 'foreign' is because they pronounce certain English words with too many syllables. This may seem strange

for two reasons: for example, the final /t/ in but in the phrase but the; and you very likely learned to pronounce

many of the words listed below from a teacher's model and/or your English textbook, so it never occurred to you that something like the syllable

count would be wrong.

A common example is the word family.

     What is special about the sound that is omitted? Think about it for a while before reading the next paragraph.

      Here are two answers: (1) it is an unstressed syllable in a word with more than one syllable; and (2) it is the neutral vowel [ə] schwa.

     Although this describes a frequent pattern for schwa elision ('omission') in American English,

it doesn't happen in every single case.

Telephone, for example, is pronounced……. and not …………So you need to note whether there is schwa elision or not for each separate

vocabulary item as you learn or review it.

(Since it's come up, how do you pronounce the adjective separate? With three syllables or

two? How about the verb to separate?

     Here are a few more examples of words with schwa elision: chocolate vegetable and memory      Here is an exercise for you. Some of the words in the list below have schwa elision; others do not.

Pronounce each word correctly) and say how many syllables it has.

interesting 3 medicine 3 or 2 evening 2 history 2 laboratory 4   similar 3 literal 2 or 3 basically 3 every 2 nursery 2 camera 2 3

elementary 4 0r 5 business 2desperate 2 or 3 necessary 3 or 4 diamond 2 or 3 virtually 3 or 4extraordinary 5 cemetery 4 or 3 different 2 momentary 4 or 3 general 2

preference 2 or 3 favorite 2 or 3 diaper 2 temperature 3 Barbara 2 or 3 federal 2 or 3 melody 3 traveling 2 or 3 classify 3 veterinarian 5 respiratory

Although schwa elision occurs frequently in both General American and in Standard British English (RP; and certainly in most other English dialects as well), there are

differences between the dialects regarding which syllables are dropped in which

words. Make sure that you adopt one consistent

form of pronunciation – do not mix different accents – to minimize

confusion to your listeners.