English has a number of contractions, mostly involving the elision of a vowel, which is replaced by an apostrophe in writing, as in I'm for "I am", and sometimes other changes as well.
Similarly, in Northeastern Mandarin 甭 (béng) 'needn't' is a phonological and graphical contraction of 不用 (bùyòng).
In fact, 于/於 '(is) in; at', 曰 'say', and 如 'resemble' are never followed by 之 '(third-person object)' or 此 '(near demonstrative)' in pre-Qin texts.
As an alternative explanation for their origin, Edwin G. Pulleyblank proposed that the [-n] ending is derived from a Sino-Tibetan aspect marker that later took on anaphoric character.
Moi ("me") and toi (informal "you") mandatorily contract to m'- and t'-, respectively, after an imperative verb and before the word y or en.
Certain prepositions are also mandatorily merged with masculine and plural direct articles: au for à le, aux for à les, du for de le, and des for de les.
For example, je ne sais pas (IPA: [ʒənəsɛpa], "I don't know") may be pronounced roughly chais pas (IPA: [ʃɛpa]), with the ne being completely elided and the [ʒ] of je being mixed with the [s] of sais.
In Colloquial Israeli Hebrew]], the preposition את (/ʔet/), which indicates a definite direct object, and the definite article prefix -ה (/ha-/) are often contracted to 'ת (/ta-/) when the former immediately precedes the latter; thus, ראיתי את הכלב (/ʁaˈʔiti ʔet haˈkelev/, "I saw the dog") may become ראיתי ת'כלב (/ʁaˈʔiti taˈkelev/).
The prepositions a, da, di, in, su, con and per combine with the various forms of the definite article, namely il, lo, la, l', i, gli, gl', and le.
In medieval texts, unstressed words very often appear contracted: todol for todo el (all the, masc.
For instance, de (of) and por (by; formerly per) combine with the definite articles o and a (masculine and feminine forms of "the" respectively), producing do, da (of the), pelo, pela (by the).
The preposition de contracts with the pronouns ele and ela (he, she), producing dele, dela (his, her).
are also used, but would be considered to be incorrect if written, except maybe in quoted direct speech, in appropriate context and style.
The informally spoken German contractions are observed almost everywhere, most often accompanied by additional ones, such as in den becoming in'n (sometimes im) or haben wir becoming hamwer, hammor, hemmer, or hamma depending on local intonation preferences.
Bavarian German features several more contractions such as gesund sind wir becoming xund samma, which are schematically applied to all word or combinations of similar sound.
(One must remember, however, that German wir exists alongside Bavarian mir, or mia, with the same meaning.)
The Munich-born footballer Franz Beckenbauer has as his catchphrase "Schau mer mal" ("Schauen wir einmal" - in English "We shall see.").
A book about his career had as its title the slightly longer version of the phrase, "Schau'n Mer Mal".
Several West Central German dialects along the Rhine River have built contraction patterns involving long phrases and entire sentences.
So, [Dat] kriegst Du nicht may become Kressenit, or Lass mich gehen, habe ich gesagt may become Lomejon haschjesaat.
Mostly, there are no binding orthographies for local dialects of German, hence writing is left to a great extent to authors and their publishers.
Outside quotations, at least, they usually pay little attention to print more than the most commonly spoken contractions, so as not to degrade their readability.
Many of these contractions are terima kasih to makasih ("thank you"), kenapa to napa ("why"), nggak to gak ("not"), sebentar to tar ("a moment"), and sudah to dah ("done").
An example of this is "Det ordner seg av seg selv" in standard written Bokmål, meaning "It will sort itself out" could become "dånesæsæsjæl" (note the letters Å and Æ, and the word "sjæl", as an eye dialect spelling of selv).
It is almost universally true that these spellings try to convey the way each word is pronounced, but it is rare to see language written that does not adhere to at least some of the rules of the official orthography.
Some contractions in rapid speech include ～っす (-ssu) for です (desu) and すいません (suimasen) for すみません (sumimasen).
For instance, sëtip alidu (sell-manage, "manage to sell") is usually written and pronounced sëtivaldu, with the two words forming a contraction and the [p] leniting into a [v] or [w].