Eyjafjallajokull from an icelander

[Victor Steinbok]

Without suggesting error, I would like an explanation of bottle,
throttle, mettle, cattle, settle, kettle, little, mantle, subtle and
boot-licker, antler, ant-lion--and, for good measure, metal, petal,
portal. US might be closer to [d] in most of these (not boot-licker,
antler, ant-lion or mantle, and no US variant for little, for some
reason), but OED says [t] for British. And mantle, little and subtle
have both schwa and non-schwa variants.

     VS-)

On 4/22/2010 11:48 AM, Geoffrey Nathan wrote:
> ... Since the combination of t-l is impossible in English, native speakers find it hard to deal with, especially at the beginning or ending of a word.

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