Uvular /l/ (Was: velarized /l/ again)

[Neal Whitman]

Some people use a different gesture involving the back of their tongue to
make an /l/: a uvular nasal consonant. (It's represented as [N] in IPA,
which unfortunately is ambiguous here, since [N] is also SAMPA for the velar
nasal.) I wrote about in a couple of short posts:
http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2006/05/21/totally-uvular/
http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2007/01/10/lsa-2007-l-and-s-at-the/

Neal Whitman
Email: nwhitman at ameritech.net
Blog: http://literalminded.wordpress.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Herb Stahlke" <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 10:31 PM
Subject: velarized /l/ again


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      velarized /l/ again
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Wilson mentioned in the previous thread that /l/ tends not to be
> velarized in AAE, at least certainly not as much in other AmE
> varieties.  I've noticed this week the word "colleague" pronounced on
> TV by two African Americans, one I think an Olympic track athlete in a
> cell phone ad and the other Ice T on Law and Order SVU.  Both
> pronounced the /l/ without velarization and clearly the onset of the
> second syllable.  In my speech the /l/ is ambisyllabic, begins
> velarized and ends unvelarized.
>
> Herb
>
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