Papiamento Orthography - Contractions - Erroneous Use

Erroneous Use

The contraction of no is peculiar in that, while its vowel is dropped, it is never affixed to the following word like ta and pa do, or any word for that matter. Moreover, no is only contracted when followed by a consonant, not a vowel as in the aforementioned examples. The exceptional nature of this contraction might lead to confusion and erroneous affixture or ’n instead of n’. The latter may be attributed to the fact that the ⟨n⟩ in n’ becomes nasal before verbs beginning with ⟨g⟩ or ⟨k⟩ (or a hard ⟨c⟩), e.g. mi n’ kere /miŋ kere/ (I didn't believe). The /ŋ/ sound is typically associated with ⟨n⟩ in a final location and mi’n kere may seem to make more sense.

As mentioned, e, like di, is only contracted with the word preceding it if a phoneme is dropped from the preceding word as well. E, however, has the unique property of changing the emphasis of the word before it. Both ’e and ’i are commonly affixed to the word before them, even when they shouldn't be. In Papiamentu, ’é should always take on the acute accent because it is stressed when contracted.