In Quenya a short final vowel is sometimes lost before another word beginning with a vowel, a phenomenon known as elision. Examples appear for many combinations of vowels:

• i loss before i - imbi “among”: A ancalima imb’ illi “A is dearest before all” (PE17/91).
• e loss before i - epe “before”: A anamelda na ep’ ilya “A is dearest of all” (PE17/57).
• e loss before e - síve “as”: sív’ emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen “as we forgive those who trespass against us” (VT43/12).
• e loss before a - alye “let you”: aly’ arca meterni “[let you] pray for us” (VT43/33).
• a loss before i - lanna “(to a point) beyond”: lendes lann’ i sír “he came (to a point) beyond the river” (PE17/65).
• a loss before e - pella “beyond”: Átaremma i ëa pell’ Ëa “our Father who art in Heaven [lit. is beyond existence]” (VT43/12).
• a loss before a - tenna “until”: tenn’ Ambar-metta “unto the ending of the world” (LotR/967).
• a loss before o - lúmenna “upon the hour”: elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo “a star shines on the hour of our meeting” (LotR/81).
• o loss before e - ono “but”: on’ et·á·rúna me va·úro “but deliver us from evil” (VT43/11).
• o loss before o - nando “valley”: Nand’ Ondoluncava “Stonewain Valley” (PE17/28).

Where these losses occur, they are for vowels that carry little-to-no semantic weight. Examples include:

• Elision for a preposition/conjunction: epe “among”: A anamelda na ep’ ilya “A is dearest of all” (PE17/57).
• Elision for an adjective: métima “last”: man cenuva métim’ andúne? “Who shall see the last evening?” (MC/222).
• Elision for a noun: nando “valley”: Nand’ Ondoluncava “Stonewain Valley” (PE17/28).
• Elision for a noun case suffix: lúmenna “upon the hour”: lúmenn’ omentielvo “on the hour of our meeting” (LotR/81).
• Elision for an uninflected aorist verb: þake “close”: á þak’ i fende, mekin “close the door, please” (PE22/166).
• Elision for a subject suffix or pronoun: lye “you”: aly’ arca meterni “pray for us [me]” (VT43/33).
• Elision for an object pronoun: me “us”: mal ám’ etelehta ulcullo: násië “but deliver us from evil: Amen” (VT43/23).

As a further example, at one point Tolkien seems to have explained the conjunction ar “and” as the result of ancient aða or asa, which became ara reduced by elision to ar’ before vowels and then generalized to the form ar before consonants: “Quenya ‘and’ ar is for as(a), in sandhi [alternate form based on position] before vowel” (PE17/41). There are, however, examples similar to the above where elision does not occur:

• No elision for a preposition/conjunction: ono “but”: ono alye eterúna me illume ilya raxellor “but deliver us always from all dangers” (VT44/5).
• No elision for an adjective: aistana “blessed”: aistana elye imíca nísi “blessed art thou amongst women” (VT43/28).
• No elision for a noun: arda “realm”: Arda Alahasta “Arda Unmarred” (MR/254).
• No elision for a noun case suffix: lenna “to you”: lenna antanyes “*to you I give it” (Minor-Doc/1955-CT).
• No elision for an aorist verb: care “do”: na care indómelya “thy will be done” (VT43/12).
• No elision for a subject suffix: alye “let you”: ono alye eterúna me illume ilya raxellor “but deliver us always from all dangers” (VT44/5).
• No elision for an object pronoun: me “us”: mal ámë etelehta ulcullo: násië “but deliver us from evil: Amen” (VT43/12).

This inconsistency makes it hard to determine a pattern, but I think elision is likely to occur in the following circumstances (from most to least likely):

• With disyllabic prepositions like imbe “between”, imbi “among”, ara “beside”, epe “before”: ar’ i mindon “beside the tower”.
• With the allative suffix -nna and possibly -llo and -sse as well (though there are no examples): ciryann’ earenduro “to the ship of the mariner”.
• With adjectives preceding the noun they modify, especially longer adjectives before longer words: vanim’ ambarónë “a beautiful dawn”
• With an uninflected aorist verb or infinitive preceding the definite article i: i atan mat’ i massa “the man eats the bread”
• For nouns only in cases where they function as a pseudo-prefix in a name, the only example being Nand’ Ondoluncava above, though vowel losses are often seen in actual compounds.

I also think elision is most likely when (a) the two vowels are identical, (b) it involves two short words that can be pronounced as a unit, or (c) for longer words when the result would not cause the primary stress of both words to become adjacent. I think the elision of pronouns in Quenya prayers of the 1950s were a transient idea, and I wouldn’t use it in Quenya writing generally (there are counter-examples within the prayers themselves, and no examples outside the prayers). I also think elision probably occurs more freely in poetry, especially when it aids the poetic meter. I think it is likely that elision is never fully required, and that you always have the option of pronouncing all vowels when speaking slowly and distinctly.

Elision and Stress: We don’t know how elision affects stress, but I am of the opinion that the stress patterns of the word do not change, so that lúmenn’ is pronounced lúMENN’ and not LÚmenn’.

Elision with i “the”: It seems that the definite article i is generally not elided before vowels, even when the following vowel is identical: sustane Manweo súle ten i indo Sindicollo “*the spirit of Manwe blew unto the heart of Thingol” (NM/239). However, i might be elided if the preceding vowel is i or e. We have two examples of this:

• lisse miruvóreva mí oromardi “of sweet nectar in the high-halls” (RGEO/58).
• utúlie’n aure “The day has come!” (S/190).

In the first example, the preposition mi “in” simplifies to mí with long í when preceding a definite article (mi i); Tolkien glossed mī as “in the” for the prose version of Namárie making it clear it included the definite article. Since mi is the only monosyllabic preposition ending in i, it is likely unique in this respect; any polysyllabic prepositions like imbi would likely undergo elision instead.

The second example is especially interesting, since ’n is a particularly abnormal form for the definite article. There is at least one other example of a variant definite article in being used before a vowel: mana i·coimas in·Eldaron “what is the ‘coimas’ of the Eldar”. Thus it seems in cases where the article i is “squeezed” between two vowels it might further reduce to ’n: utúlie i aurë → utúlie in aurë → utúlie’n aurë. Hat tip to Raccoon on the notion that this ’n is a definite article; I first got the idea from his discussion of the definite article, though my guesses on the mechanics of its appearance are not exactly the same as his.

Elision with ar “and”: We have one example of elision of the infinitive of an a-stem verb before the conjunction ar “and”: cuita’r pare “live and learn” (PE22/154). It is not clear why this is cuita’r and not cuit’ ar (analogous to á þak’ i fende above), since the pronunciation would be the same. Perhaps in this case the final vowel of the verb is considered more semantically significant than the vowel of ar. In any case, it seems that for pronunciation the two a’s would merge in this circumstance as well.

This kind of elision of the initial letter of ar is not a universal phenomenon, however: sínen i·anda nyarne metta ar taina andaurenya na quanta “*with this the long tale ends and my extended long day is complete” (Minor-Doc/1955-CT).

Conceptual Development: There are examples of elision in Tolkien’s earlier writing, but not enough information to determine if there were any conceptual shifts on how and when it occurred. Elision does seem to be more frequent in the 1950s and 60s than it was earlier, however.

One significant exception to this are the subject pronoun prefixes from the Early Qenya Grammar of the 1920s, which underwent modification or elision when appearing before verbs beginning with vowels (PE14/86). There is no evidence of such elision in Tolkien’s brief restoration of subject prefixes in the late 1940s (for example in the Quenya Verbal System, PE22/99-127), but that could just be lack of examples.