Introduction to contractions

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Introduction to contractions발음듣기

[Voiceover] Hello Grammarians, hello David.발음듣기

[David] Hello Paige!발음듣기

[Paige] So today we're gonna talk about contractions which are another use for our friend, the apostrophe.발음듣기

So David, what is a contraction?발음듣기

[David] So something that apostrophes are really good at doing is showing when letters are missing from a word.발음듣기

Right, so let's say we have something like the two word phrase "I will".발음듣기

So in linguistics, I'm told there's this idea called the principle of least effort, but I'm not a linguist, Paige, you are.발음듣기

What is the principle of least effort?발음듣기

[Paige] So that's kind of a fancy way of saying people like to be lazy.발음듣기

[David] Sure.발음듣기

[Paige] Which is, you know, tends to be accurate across language, so you know, we can say something like "I will", but honestly that kind of takes a lot of effort to say, right?발음듣기

[David] I have to articulate the mouth in this particular way.발음듣기

It's just easier to just collapse all of that into one, you know, one syllable, one sound to say "I'll".발음듣기

And when we do that, we use an apostrophe to indicate the missing letters.발음듣기

That missing "w" sound.발음듣기

That's a contraction.발음듣기

So most model verbs, right, if you remember model auxiliaries from the verb section.발음듣기

We use those a lot in English.발음듣기

And so it's really easy to combine those with most words or pronouns into a contraction.발음듣기

So you could take the phrase "she would", which is a lot of letters to say.발음듣기

Takes a lot of letters to write.발음듣기

And we can turn that into, with the help of our friend the apostrophe, the word "she'd" means the same thing.발음듣기

[Paige] Yeah, that's pretty amazing.발음듣기

I mean this tiny apostrophe stands in the place of all of these letters.발음듣기

[David] Yeah it's doing a lot of work.발음듣기

Have I got a deal for your, Paige.발음듣기

How would you like three letters for the price of four?발음듣기

'Cause you can shorten, you know, something like "he is" to he's".발음듣기

[Paige] Right. Yeah, I mean, that's what the principle we were talking about is all about.발음듣기

Like "he is" isn't that hard to say, but he's" is a lot easier.발음듣기

[David] So this is pretty straightforward, but there are some kind of strange uses of contractions.발음듣기

Some strange uses of the apostrophe that don't seem as immediately evident on their face.발음듣기

So for example if you contract the phrase "will not" into a single contraction, it doesn't turn into willn't", it turns into won't".발음듣기

[Paige] So in this case the apostrophe stands in the place of this "o", but all these letters disappear, and they're kind of unaccounted for.발음듣기

[David] It's weird, it's like the Bermuda Triangle of punctuation marks.발음듣기

They all just kind of got sucked up into that apostrophe.발음듣기

[Paige] Yeah.발음듣기

[David] Never to be seen again.발음듣기

[Paige] Who knows where they went.발음듣기

[David] But there aren't a ton of those.발음듣기

There's "won't", there's "don't", but not to take away from our original point.발음듣기

This is what the apostrophe does when it's working to contract.발음듣기

Right, it just takes letters from the middle of the word, and it takes them away, it stands in for the fact that there are letters missing.발음듣기

[Paige] You got it.발음듣기

[David] Cool.발음듣기

[Paige] So "I will" goes to "I'll", She would" becomes she'd", He is" becomes he's", and will not" becomes won't". So that's contractions.발음듣기

You can learn anything.발음듣기

[David] David out.발음듣기

[Paige] Paige out.발음듣기

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