geemblik

Hi all,

Today I heard a strong example of agglutination in the speech of a Dutch
speaker. He was saying "op een gegeven ogenblik" (=at a certain moment).
Normally "gegeven ogenblik" is pronounced with six syllables:
[X@'Xev@ 'oX@mblIk]. He pronounced it with three: "geemblik" ['Xem=blIk].

The funny thing is that it remained perfectly comprehensible what he was
saying. I get the impression that if such an agglutinated pronunciation
is spoken rather sloppily, it is easier to understand it than
when it is articulated clearly. I guess that sloppy speech makes the
brain starts making more corrections to what is heard than well
articulated speech.

I had already heard a reduction of "gegeven moment" [X@'Xev@ mo'mEnt]
to "gevement" ['Xev@,mEnt] - a reduction from five syllables to three,
but reducing six to three seems like pushing the limits. Are there many
examples in other languages of reducing six syllables to three?


emoráni,

René

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