Cicero - elided in Orations or not?

[Estoniacus Inoriginale]

I've been arguing with an Italian, in Latin. He thought my recitation of Latin that used synaloepha and elisions, was unclassical... Did Cicero nasalize or use synaloepha and how regularly?

[benissimus]

Nasalization seems to be a part of regular speech, whether poetry or prose. Elision was definitely a part of regular and probably formal speech as well, though I don't think we know definitively when they would have used elision or hiatus.

[Estoniacus Inoriginale]

Benissimum jam gratias ago, quod certius facit, corroborans.

Thanks, I thought so as well. It has turned out for me that both hiatus, elision and to an extent partial pronunciation of the obscured syllable was pronounced, as it has started to spontaneously happen in my phonetic practice, hiatus could have been a ittle weird if there was no point of emphasis in conjunction with it. There's nothing more certain beyond this, so we remain to possess the same amount of detail.

[Lucus Eques]

I agree fully with Benissimus — your Italian friend may dispute primarily the nasalized final -m, which is an unfamiliar concept to most.