phenomenon in the phonological evolution of French. For example, s following a vowel and preceding another consonant regularly elided, with compensatory lengthening of the vowel. Latin → Old French → Modern French Latin → Old French → Modern French Latin → Old French → Modern French German Nouns and adjectives that end with unstressed "el" or "er" have the "e" elided when they are declined or a suffix follows. ex. becomes , , etc., and + becomes . The final of a noun is also elided when another noun or suffix is concatenated onto it: + becomes . In both of the above cases, the represents a schwa. Icelandic Elision () is common in Icelandic. There are a variety of rules for its occurrence, but the most notable is the loss of trailing consonants in common particles as well as the merger of similar vowel sounds. For example, the ubiquitous (verb) structure ("I am verb-ing") becomes transformed to (verb); the full particles is spoken only when a person is sounding the sentence out word by word. Another noteworthy and extremely common example along this line includes the phrase ("really?") which is pronounced as . A common example of internal consonant loss in Icelandic is ("here you go", "please"), pronounced (the hidden sound is unrelated to the elision and occurs when a or precedes ). Another special case of elision is the loss of from the start of ("this", "that"), which is sometimes pronounced ( (what is this?) -> ). The pronunciation of the full word tends to lay emphasis on it ("What is this?") while the elision of the word leads to its deemphasis ("What is this?"). The loss of the in is similar to how can be lost in "that" and "this" when asking a question and speaking swiftly in English. Irish Elision is found in the Ulster dialect of Irish, particularly in final position. , for example, while pronounced in the Conamara dialect, is pronounced in Ulster. is also elided when it begins intervocalic consonant clusters. is pronounced ; is pronounced . Japanese Elision is extremely common in the pronunciation of the Japanese language. In general, a high vowel ( or ) that appears in a low-pitched syllable between two voiceless consonants is devoiced and often deleted outright. However, unlike French or English, Japanese does not often show elision in writing. The process is purely phonetic and varies