pronunciation of "pas assez" - should the 's' elide into 'assez'?

Question

Laura K Lawless · Answer

Bonjour Adrienne,

First, a quick note about terminology: "elide" means to get rid of (as in je + ai = j'ai, the e is elided). But what you're asking about is liaisons: should there be a liaison between pas and assez? And the answer is that this type of liaison is optional: you can pronounce it for more formal French, or not pronounce it for less formal French.

See my lesson on liaisons for more info.

Andy Normansell · Answer

This is the dated computer generated voice text to speech voice from Google Translate, which still remains for a few audios. I'd put it down more to something which would have a liaison in standard French but is dropped in more familiar colloquial settings.

Andy Normansell · Answer

I would expect Google to give standard pronunciation rather than casual, so I expect this may have been a glitch at the time.