> Although in elementary school we learned to call them > "contractions. This is the part of your understanding that is incorrect. You're talking about cont

> Although in elementary school we learned to call them > "contractions. This is the part of your understanding that is incorrect. You're talking about contractions, which linguists call Synaeresis [1]. The article talks about Vowel (Phonetic) Reductions [2], which are changes in the sounds that the speaker emits, not the complete removal of the sounds. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaeresis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaeresis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_reduction