I was reading a text using yomitan, and when I highlighted a や that was next to the word 歌, it said 歌や was the verb 歌う in ば form but や was a contraction of ば.
Now, in the context of the sentence I was reading (て本部に向かい、広い会館の中で、歌や講和を聞き ました) I think that was not the case but rather a simple や to "list" items. But my question is: Is this really a contraction? I googled it and couldn't find anything, so I was wondering if maybe it's a spoken language thing? or maybe it was a mistake?
But my question is: Is this really a contraction?
No, it's not. In "歌や講和を聞きました", 歌や is a simple combination of the noun 歌 and the listing particle や. No contraction is involved.
歌や was the verb 歌う in ば form but や was a contraction of ば
Yes, this is also correct, and this contraction pattern (utaeba → utaya) has been asked many times on this site. However, for ワ行 verbs, this contraction is not very common in reality. While 言や is exceptionally common, people rarely say 歌や, 買や, and 戦や.
Importantly, the two "歌や" are completely different, and only the latter involves contraction. I know nothing about "yomitan", but doesn't it simply search for highlighted words without considering the context?
The only other suffix that readily comes to mind related to appending や to a word is the construction found in 「 恥ずかしがり屋 」and 「照れ屋」 where 屋 means "someone with a (certain) personality trait"
