A defining characteristic of several of the more eastern dialects is that they exhibit a great deal of vowel syncope, the deletion of vowels in certain positions within a word. In some dialects (primarily Odawa and Eastern Ojibwe), all unstressed vowels are lost (see above for a discussion of Ojibwe stress). In other dialects (such as some dialects of Central Ojibwe), short vowels in initial syllables are lost, but not in other unstressed syllables. For example, the word "oshkinawe" ('young man') of Algonquin and Southwestern Ojibwe (stress: "oshkinawe") is "shkinawe" in some dialects of Central Ojibwe and "shkinwe" in Eastern Ojibwe and Odawa. Regular, pervasive syncope is a comparatively recent development, arising in the past eighty years or so.