Elide

elide
verb, transitive. To omit a sound or syllable when speaking. To join together; to merge. Elide is most frequently used as a term to describe the way that some sounds or syllables are dropped in speech, for example in contractions such as "I'll" or "he's." The result of such an omission is that the two surrounding syllables are merged; this fact has given rise to a new sense, with the meaning "join together" or "merge."

Even after working with him for months, she still had to concentrate to translate Donnie's speech into standard English. Part of the problem was her own diminished hearing. Part of it was his dense, down-home Oklahoma accent. Part of it was the way he elided words that were not contractions when uttered by any other person. The fact that such garbled language could emerge from someone so knowledgable about horses and horse racing was a continual marvel to her. She accepted it as a unique trait and appreciated the knowledge that he distributed every time he entered the room where she worked. He inhabited a different world than she did, and she knew she would never be able to find a place in his. All she could do was listen to him, ask questions, and learn about it.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.