"Far from being a symptom of linguistic indifference or moral decay, dropping or reducing sounds displays an underlying logic similar to the data-compression schemes that are used to create MP3s and JPEGs. These algorithms trim down the space needed to digitally store sounds and images by throwing out information that is redundant or doesn’t add much to our perceptual experience—for example, tossing out data at sound frequencies we can’t hear, or not bothering to encode slight gradations of color that are hard to see. The idea is to keep only the information that has the greatest impact.
Mumbling—or phonetic reduction, as language scientists prefer to call it—appears to follow a similar strategy. Not all words are equally likely to be reduced. In speech, you’re more likely to reduce common words like fine than uncommon words like tine. You’re also more likely to reduce words if they’re predictable in the context...
it offers some insight into why languages tolerate massive amounts of ambiguity in their vocabularies: Speakers can recycle easy-to-pronounce words and phrases to take on multiple meanings, in situations where listeners can easily recover the speaker’s intent."
http://m.nautil.us/blog/-mumbling-isnt-a-sign-of-lazinessits-a-clever-data_compression-trick
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