Eyjafjallajokull from an icelander

[Victor Steinbok]

Thanks. The two answers on this pointed in the direction that I thought
it was going in. As I said, I was not disputing the correctness of the
remark, but merely its strength. As I understand it, at this point, the
"lateral /tl/" is the same as the sound one finds in the Russian word
for "aphid" /tl'a/. I know self-reporting can be misleading, but, in
this case, there is a single palatalized consonant that can be best
described--in my pronunciation--as dropping the sides and the tip of the
tongue before full release. My phonology is very rusty...

      VS-)

On 4/22/2010 1:25 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:
> Strictly speaking, these are combinations of t-l, but, except for the
> last three in  rapid speech (where you just might get the affricate
> Geoffrey is talking about), they involve different places within the
> syllable for the /l/.  In bottle, etc., the /l/ (usually a dark,
> velarized one) is the PEAK of the syllable--the usual place for a
> vowel.  The /t/ before it is an alveolar flap, not quite a /d/, but
> voiced like one, closer to a Spanish intervocalic single r.  In the
> other 3 cases you mention, the /l/ is in the onset of the syllable.
> The /t/ before it is a regular /t/, most of the time, probably
> unreleased.  In the /tl/ combinations mentioned here, the whole sound
> is best looked at as an affricate, a stop where you give it a lateral
> release by dropping the sides of the tongue after alveolar contact--
> and has more characteristics of a single sound, the way /tS/ is in
> English.  As I say, in rapid speech, this sound is a possibility in
> bootlicker, antler, ant lion, but not in the others.  In Icelandic,
> it came historically from a long voiceless /l/ (pre-aspirated?), in
> turn from a long voiced /l/ (final sonorants devoiced in Old
> Icelandic), as the spelling shows.
>
> Paul Johnston
> On Apr 22, 2010, at 12:59 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>
>
>
>> 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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