Pronunciation question

Claire asks this question: Attendez-vous un taxi ? She does not run the "s" in vous into the "u" in un - "vouzun" as I've heard many people do. I would like some guidance or commentary on this please.

Bonjour Jodi! This is a bit of a tricky one. Although you are right in assuming that these two words should be run together, in this situation we do not. Generally, when we reverse the pronoun-verb order to form a question in the formal form we do not pronounce the 's' at the end of 'vous', no matter whether the following word begins in a vowel or not. Let's look at another example, "Parlez-vous anglais?" Here again we do not join the 'vous' and 'anglais' by pronouncing the 's'. I cannot really give you an explanation as to why this is, except maybe that reversing the word order somehow separates the hyphenated verb and pronoun from the phrase a wee bit in order to emphasis the question which is perhaps why we don't link it to the rest of the phrase. Or if that doesn't help, then you can just put it down to one of those many many exceptions to the rule that French seems to love so much :) I really hope this helps and keep up the good work! - Marie-Claire

That is really helpful, the idea that an inversion or other separation tends to break the tendency for elision. So, in the phrase "Alors, une question ... " you would not elide the s of Alors because it is kinda set off? (or maybe the s in Alors is never pronounced?)

Bonjour Lance, Yes, you are exactly right! You seem to already have a feel for the language. Keep up the good work! - Marie-Claire

well, thanks to your explanations.