postvocalic /l/

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

But wouldn't "brawl" sound more like "brow" than "bra"? And semantics would play a role: " brawl" is a word that I'd expect many 7-year-olds would not know.

------Original Message------
From: Charles Doyle
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Subject: [ADS-L] postvocalic /l/
Sent: Mar 4, 2010 10:31 AM

A former student of mine, who belongs to Teach for American and teaches second grade in a Mississippi Delta public school (she is a white Southerner; all of her students are African Americans) reported an interesting incident.

A "vocabulary building" sentence in the textbook reads, "The bears got in a big BRAWL." Reviewing the exercise with the class, the teacher read the sentence aloud. A student, who obviously had neglected to read the assignment, heard the sentence as "The bears got in a big BRA"--but she was puzzled trying to visualize the situation!

--Charlie

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org