Etymology of "Ska"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Jun 12 03:41:01 UTC 2005


At 12:47 AM -0400 6/11/05, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>Unfortunately, the _Gleaner_ at the time seems to have been directed at
>>Jamaica's slender white minority, so it apparently missed the first
>>five
>>years of the ska "rage". It wasn't until ska had become popular in
>>England
>>(Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" was a huge hit there)
>
>As it was here, reaching no.2 in 1964. The singer herself appeared on
>Dick Clark's American Bandstand.

There was *something* about those /l/s in the way she sang
"Lollipop"; can anyone help identify the relevant phonetic feature?
I can still hear it in my mind's ear 40 years later...

Larry (with no special /l/, alas)



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