XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: gadekryds@lundhansen.dk   
      
   Peter Moylan wrote:   
      
   > Is there a natural tendency for languages to lose final syllables or   
   > final consonants? This thread has provided examples in Spanish. French   
   > lost a lot of final consonants (in speech, but not in writing) centuries   
   > ago. Some southern Italian dialects have dropped a few final vowels, but   
   > this does not extend to northern dialects or the mainstream version of   
   > the language. Portuguese seems to drop all sorts of things.   
   >   
   > Those are all examples in Romance languages. I can't think of any   
   > examples in Germanic languages, and I don't know enough about other   
   > language families.   
      
   Spoken Danish drops as much as possible. "Synes" => "sys", "trapperne"   
   => "trappern", and there are many more examples.   
      
   In dk.kultur.sprog (language) we joked with pronouncing   
   "socialdemokratiet" with three syllables (it has 8).   
      
   --   
   Bertel   
   Kolt, Denmark   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)