What is Elision? (According to Peter Roach)

According to Peter Roach’s English Phonetics and Phonology, A Practical Course: “The nature of elision may be stated quite simply: under certain circumstances sounds disappear; one might express this in more technical language by saying that in certain circumstances a phoneme may be realized as zero, or have zero realization or be deleted. As with assimilation, elision is typical or rapid, casual speech; the process of change in phoneme realisations produced by changing the speed and casualness of speech is sometimes called gradation. Producing elisions is something which foreign learners do not need to learn to do, but it is important for them to be aware that when native speakers of English talk to each other, quite a number of phonemes that the foreigner might expect to hear are not actually pronounced.”

In simply words, Elision is “the omission of one or more sounds in a phrase or in a word in certain contexts. Some letters which are between two consonants do not sound; this refers to the sound that will be silenced. This can help the speaker to pronounce words in an easier and quicker way.” Both consonants and vowels may be affected, and sometimes even whole syllables may be elided. Elision happens mostly in songs, in poetry, in theatrical plays, in order to maintain a particular rhythm.

 Some examples:

comfortable: /ˈkʌmfərtəbəl/ → /ˈkʌmftərbəl/

fifth: /ˈfɪfθ/ → /ˈfɪθ/

him: /hɪm/ → /ɪm/

laboratory: /læˈbɔrətɔri/ → /ˈlæbrətɔri/ (American English), /ləˈbɔrətri/ (British English)

temperature: /ˈtɛmpərətʃər/ → /ˈtɛmpərtʃər/, /ˈtɛmprətʃər/

vegetable: /ˈvɛdʒətəbəl/ → /ˈvɛdʒtəbəl/