postvocalic /l/

[Tom Zurinskas]

If an "awe-dropper" mispronounces the word "brawl" as ~braal (with "ah" instead of "awe" as the vowel) it's easy to hear "bra" (if the "l" is not said strongly).

My big worry is that "off" when said with the "awe-dropped" becomes ~aaf and sounds like "on" if the last phoneme is dropped, which, as we see, can happen.  In fact on an airplane I heard the steward say "Turn all electronic devices ah".  He clipped the last phoneme, which was "f", for "off" I suppose, not "n" for "on".  But the "ah" might make one suppose "on".  Not good in critical applications to confuse "off" and "on".


Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling



----------------------------------------
> Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 10:31:10 -0500
> From: cdoyle at UGA.EDU
> Subject: postvocalic /l/
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Charles Doyle
> Subject: postvocalic /l/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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