Poetic Esperanto: the two elisions

Rule 16 of the Fundamento allows two elisions: a noun may drop its final -o, and the article la may drop its -a. An apostrophe marks the gap. The rule covers nothing else, and the stress never moves.

You meet these apostrophes in the anthem and the old songs. The song lessons lean on this page.

Rule 16: two elisions

The Fundamento's own English version of the rule:

The a of the article, and final o of substantives, may be sometimes dropped euphoniae gratia ... in such cases an apostrophe should be substituted for the discarded vowel.

Euphoniae gratia means for the sake of sound. In practice that means verse, where a poet is counting syllables:

It is always optional. De la espero is not worse Esperanto than de l' espero; it is one syllable longer. And it costs nothing: by the time you hear mond in a line, you already know it is a noun.

What Rule 16 does not cover

The rule takes a FINAL vowel, and only on a noun or la. Every other ending carries grammar:

So la mond' can never be the object (La Espero has it after a preposition: al la mond'). To say I see the world, you need the whole word:

• Mi vidas la mondon. - I see the world.

Tio ends in -o but is a correlative, not a noun, so ti' is not standard. PMEG notes that poets occasionally use such forms anyway; in your own writing, leave tio whole.