What are contractions?
What are contractions?
Contractions, also known as crises, are a morphophonological resource of the Spanish language that consists of merging or joining two or more words to form a single word. Therefore, they are words that we shorten, eliminating one or more letters.
To carry out the contractions, different figures of speech are used, also called literary figures such as those of transformation and omission, the most common being the single. The single is the union of the final vowel or vowels of a word with the initial vowel or vowels of the next so that they form a single syllable.
Thus, in Spanish, we only have two recognized forms of contractions: “al” (for “to him) and “del” (for “of him). Unlike English, which has a multitude of contractions, or Italian and Portuguese, in Spanish, the most used contractions in spoken and written language are these two prepositional contractions. There are more, but they enter the colloquial language or are in disuse.
The AL contraction
When the preposition “to” (meaning direction, place, time, “until” and manner) is followed by the article “the”, the two words are joined to form a new word, the contraction “AL” :
- “I’m going to the supermarket” becomes “I’m going to the supermarket”.
- “I like to go to the movies on weekends” becomes “I like to go to the movies on weekends”
- “On Sunday we go to town” becomes “On Sunday we go to town”
The contraction of
When the preposition “of” (which means possession or belonging, origin or provenance, material or time, among other multiple uses) is followed by the article “el”, the two words are joined to form the contraction “DEL” :
- “The book belongs to the professor” comes to be “The book belongs to the professor”.
- “Seville is a city in the south of Spain” becomes “Seville is a city in the south of Spain”.
- “The Government will increase the budget of the Ministry of Health” becomes “The Government will increase the budget of the Ministry of Health”.
Some examples of contractions in Spanish
We have studied the two prepositional contractions that exist in Spanish, “al” and “del”:
“Tomás is sitting next to his father”
becomes
“Tomás is sitting next to his father”
“Firefighters pulled the residents out of the burning building”
becomes
“Firefighters pulled the residents out of the burning building”
Another possible way of using contractions in Spanish is joining two or more words through vowels. That is when the first word ends in a vowel and the second also begins with a vowel. Some examples are “desto”, “deste” and “desta” (for “of this”, “of this” and “of this”). However, these contractions are out of use, dating from medieval times, and are no longer part of the educated norm.
They are also contracted in the colloquial language “palate” and “patrás” (for “forward” and “for backwards”). In this tweet, the Royal Spanish Academy explains how to use these contractions correctly:
Likewise, there is also the contraction “entrambos” (for “between both”) that is used as an adjective and pronoun with the meaning of “both”. According to the Fundéu (Urgent Spanish Foundation), the use of “entrambos” was frequent in earlier times and today it is used more in written language with an archaic intention. If we want to use it in literary texts, it always comes before the noun and must not be preceded or followed by an article or any other determiner. Find more information at this link.
Colloquial uses of contractions in Spanish
While the contractions ” al ” and ” del ” are of required use in the spoken and written language of Spanish, there are other contractions of colloquial use whose use is not accepted by the Royal Spanish Academy:
- “I’m going to town” result from the contraction of the preposition “for” and the singular definite article “el”.
Other examples of contractions that do not include prepositions are the following:
- Wherever + want = wherever (everywhere)
- Another + hour = once (which can be accepted in a literary use of language)
In many cases of spoken language, the word “for” is shortened in several sentences. For example:
- For + There = Pa’llá
- For + Up = Up
- For + What = Pa’qué
Keep in mind that many of these uses are local and may vary depending on the country, region or city.