short vowels are pronounced: feminine plural -na shortened vowels in the jussive/imperative of defective verbs, e.g., irmi! 'throw!' second-person singular feminine past-tense -ti and likewise anti 'you (fem. sg.)' sometimes, first-person singular past-tense -tu sometimes, second-person masculine past-tense -ta and likewise anta 'you (masc. sg.)' final -a in certain short words, e.g., laysa 'is not', sawfa (future-tense marker) The nunation endings -an -in -un are not pronounced. However, they are pronounced in adverbial accusative formations, e.g., تَقْرِيبًا 'almost, approximately', عَادَةً 'usually'. The tāʾ marbūṭah ending ة is unpronounced, except in construct state nouns, where it sounds as t (and in adverbial accusative constructions, e.g., عَادَةً 'usually', where the entire -tan is pronounced). The masculine singular nisbah ending is actually pronounced and is unstressed (but plural and feminine singular forms, i.e. when followed by a suffix, still sound as ). Full endings (including case endings) occur when a clitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g., 'us/our'). Informal short pronunciation All the rules for formal short pronunciation apply, except as follows. The past tense singular endings written formally as -tu -ta -ti are pronounced -t -t -ti. But masculine is pronounced in full. Unlike in formal short pronunciation, the rules for dropping or modifying final endings are also applied when a clitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g., 'us/our'). If this produces a sequence of three consonants, then one of the following happens, depending on the speaker's native colloquial variety: A short vowel (e.g., -i- or -ǝ-) is consistently added, either between the second and third or the first and second consonants. Or, a short vowel is added only if an otherwise unpronounceable sequence occurs, typically due to a violation of the sonority hierarchy (e.g., -rtn- is pronounced as a three-consonant cluster, but -trn- needs to be broken up). Or, a short vowel is never added, but consonants like r l m n occurring between two other consonants will be pronounced as a syllabic consonant (as in the English words "butter bottle bottom button"). When a doubled consonant occurs before another consonant (or finally), it is often shortened to a single consonant rather than a vowel added. (However, Moroccan Arabic never shortens doubled consonants or inserts short vowels to break up clusters, instead tolerating arbitrary-length series of arbitrary consonants and hence Moroccan Arabic speakers are likely to follow the same rules in their pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic.) The clitic