Conservative

In linguistics, a conservative form is one that has undergone little change. For example, it is said that writing is a more conservative form than speech. With words, a word is conservative if it is closer to the older form from which it derived in comparison to cognate forms from the same original word. For example, the Spanish word caro and the French cher evolved from the Latin word cārum. Since the Spanish word is more similar to the common source, it is more conservative than its French counterpart.

The Indefinite Article & Juncture Loss

The English indefinite article "a(n" is derived from the same root as "one." (Think of how in Romance languages, the indefinite article is the same as the word for "one," e.g. "un" in French.) Originally, the article was "an" but the "n" would be dropped before a word beginning with a consonant. In Medieval English, the word "napron" existed. Yes, "napron." But, the use of both forms of the indefinite article led to the formation of the word as we know it today: "apron." This phenomenon is referred to as "juncture loss" in the field of historical linguistics and it occurs in other languages as well. A notable example in French is "une norenge" which eventually became modern French's "une orange."