Don't touch my phonemes

[Rick Mc Callister]

	I'm not so sure about both <l>'s being "dark" in American English.
They are usually very different from one another.
	Initial <l> is closer to dark /l/ but not as velar as the /l/ I've
often heard among Scots
	Final <l> is usually delateralized to the point that words such as
<caw> & <call> are pronounced the same; e.g. <sail> /seiw/, <sell> /sEw/,
<girl> /g at RO/ [O = my feeble attempt at a vowel derived from /w/]
	It's my impression that final dark /l/ is more of a Northeastern
phenomenon and more common among older speakers
	All in all, it's similar to the situation of <l> in Brazilian
Portuguese, although in Brazil, final <l> may be closer to /u/ than /w/
	There are, of course, many regional differences.
	In the South, for a lot of people final <l> is silent; e.g. <gulf>
/g at f/, call /ka:/ --although this is more common in "closed" syllables
	You also hear final <l> as something between /l/ & /r/; e.g. <call>
as "carl"

>Gabor Sandi writes:

>> On the other hand, the same phoneme occurs in each member of the following
>> pairs of words, despite the obvious differences in pronunciation:

>> lick - fall  : both have the phoneme /l/, even though one is "clear", the
>> other is "dark" (this is true for England - I believe that in the US, both
>> /l/'s have a "dark" pronunciation)

>Indeed.  In North America, and in much of Scotland, /l/ is always dark,
>while in Wales and in Ireland it is always clear.

[snip]

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701