article is always after a vowel even when the next word begins with a consonant, e.g. - 'the cat is scratching', but - 'the black cat'. - 'Where is the town?' - 'I am reading' Elision of word-final is almost always found in spoken Welsh to the point where the words are spelt with optional final in words like and has been eradicated from the inflected prepositions: , not * - 'on me', etc. These always retain their final in the literary register, however. Welsh also displays elision of initial syllables in singular/plural or collective/singulative pairs where the plural or singulative becomes longer than two syllables. This, however, is now restricted to specific nouns and is not productive. E.g. - 'sock / socks' where the initial has been lost in the plural; - 'birds / a bird' where the initial has been lost in the singulative. Related areas Aphaeresis Apocope Clipping (morphology) Cluster reduction Contraction Crasis Disemvoweling Elision in the French language Lacuna Poetic contraction Prodelision Sandhi Synaeresis Synalepha Syncope Synizesis Vowel reduction Weak form words References General references External links French examples (contains pop-up ad) Greek Grammar Putting Words Together List of words said with Relaxed Pronunciation - also includes contractions Figures of speech Phonology Poetic devices Prosody (linguistics)