Syncope (phonetics)

Okay kiddo, syncope in phonetics is when we shorten a long word by skipping or leaving out certain sounds in the middle of the word. It's kind of like when we play a game of hot potato and we pass around a potato as quickly as possible, but sometimes we drop it and it skips a few people.

For example, think of the word "vegetable". It's a pretty long word, right? Well, sometimes we might say "veg'table" instead. We leave out the "e" sound in the middle of the word and squeeze the two syllables together to make it shorter.

This happens a lot in everyday speech without us even realizing it. "Comfortable" becomes "comf'table", "chocolate" becomes "choc'late", and "banana" becomes "ban'na".

So basically, syncope is a fancy word for leaving out sounds in the middle of long words to make them shorter and easier to say. Hope that makes sense, kiddo!