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In French, elision (élision) is the suppression of a final unstressed vowel (usually /ə/) immediately before another word beginning with a vowel or a silent 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 (’, ' ) 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 three basic purposes:
French has three articles: definite, indefinite, and partitive. The difference between the definite and indefinite articles is similar to that in English (definite: the; indefinite: a, an), except that the indefinite article has a plural form (similar to some, though English normally does not use an article before indefinite plural nouns). The ...
If the subject of the sentence is already plural, however, add the apostrophe after the “s.” Like the earlier example: “The dogs’ leashes.” The “s” makes the word plural; the ...
In languages like French, elision removes the end syllable of a word that ends with a vowel sound when the next begins with a vowel sound, in order to avoid hiatus, or retain a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel rhythm. [2] These poetic contractions originate from archaic English. By the end of the 18th century, contractions were generally looked ...
The Associated Press Stylebook says “use only an apostrophe” for singular proper names ending in S: Dickens’ novels, Hercules’ labors, Jesus’ life. But not everyone agrees.
Most disagreements about the use of possessive forms of nouns and of the apostrophe are due to the erroneous opinion that a term should not use an apostrophe if it does not express possession. [9] In the words of Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage: [10] The argument is a case of fooling oneself with one's own terminology.
Elision of unstressed vowels (usually /ə/) is common in the French language and, in some cases, must be indicated orthographically with an apostrophe. Elision of vowel and consonant sounds was also an important phenomenon in the phonological evolution of French.