Thread:User talk:CodeCat/bantu/reply (6)

That would be misleading. Elided means that there was originally a sound that disappeared through sound change. With Xhosa and Zulu noun prefixes, comparative evidence shows that the initial vowel was an innovation of those languages at some point in their history, and that the original form of the noun prefixes had no initial vowel. So it's not that the vowel is elided in certain forms, it's just not added. I don't know of a better name though, many people just call it 'without initial vowel'.