spoken numbers, not using "y"?

Question

The flashcards are great to practice your numbers but when I listen to native speakers and the spanish radio stations I listen very carefully but I do not hear the "y" when they say numbers such as 39 or 47. Why is that?

Answer 1

That is because in Spanish, when the end of a word and the beginning of a word have both vowel sounds, both words are pronounced as a single one, instead of two. In other words, we don't read it as "treinta y cinco", but "trentai cinco", pronouncing that "ai" sound so fast, that the "i" is sometimes blurred a bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synalepha

Gracias lazarus, the link was nice also. - foxluv, Sep 11, 2010