Sinalefa

Sinalefa is a prosodic phenomenon in poetry in which the final vowel of one word and the initial vowel of the next word are pronounced together as a single syllable. It reduces the total number of syllables in a line and is especially characteristic of Spanish verse, though related effects occur in other Romance languages.

The rule is simple: when a word ends in a vowel and the following word begins with a vowel (or a silent h), the two vowels fuse into one syllable for the purposes of meter. This merging affects the counting of syllables in a line, often allowing poets to meet the constraints of a given metric form. It is commonly contrasted with hiato, where the two vowels remain separate and contribute two syllables to the count.

Sinalefa interacts with other syllabic processes. Within-word phenomena such as synérisis and dieresis concern vowel groups inside a word, while sinalefa operates across word boundaries. In practice, sinalefa enables flexible metrical fitting, particularly in forms that require a fixed number of syllables per line, such as decimas or decasyllables in Spanish poetry.

Examples are frequently cited to illustrate the concept, such as una obra, where the boundary between una and obra merges the adjacent vowels, reducing the syllable count compared with a naïve subdivision. While classical and traditional poetry often employs sinalefa by convention, modern verse may count syllables according to different editorial or practical approaches, depending on whether inference of pronunciation or strict meter is preferred.