Consonant deletion

English is fairly unique among the world’s major languages in allowing complex consonant clusters, with sequences of up to four consonants in a row, and so the reduction of such clusters conforms to a natural tendency towards simplification and less marked phonotactic patterns. It is therefore not a surprise that such simplification tendencies are fairly widespread. Omitting a non-functional word-final consonant preceded by another one (e.g. wasp > was’) is the norm in the Caribbean, in ethnic dialects and contact forms of AmE, in LSE and Cameroon, and in South-East Asia, and it also occurs variably in all dialects of AmE, all non-white dialects of SAfE, and also in northern England. If the last consonant is the sole realization of an inflectional morpheme (e.g. helped > help’), the ensuing loss of information inhibits the process, which thus occurs less frequently but is nevertheless documented in roughly the same regions. Word-final single consonants (e.g. cut > cu’) are deleted much more reluctantly. In comparison, the simplification of word-initial consonant clusters (e.g. splash > ‘plash) is much more restricted, mostly to contact-induced varieties, including BrC, JamC, T&TC, and a few West African and Asian varieties.