postvocalic /l/

[Paul Johnston]

Tom,
I'm sure someone said the same thing about "ea-dropping" and the
confusion of beat/beet about 1700, and I know they did about  rose/
rows and mane/main about 1620.  English survived.  It will here too.

Paul
On Mar 5, 2010, at 11:26 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:

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> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: postvocalic /l/
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> If the fear is irrational, why do we have a clear example that "awe-
> dropping" leads to miscommunication?  Apparantly when the "l" was
> not heard for the word "brawl" and it was pronounced "braal", it
> was taken to be "bra".  So in a workplace where "off" and "on" are
> spoken frequently, it should be obvious that there is an increasing
> danger of miscommunication if "off" is pronounced with the "ah"
> phoneme.
>
>
> As for how "Most of N America" say "cot/caught", 61% say these
> words differently and 39% say them the same.  Dialect Survey -
> http://www3.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/maps.html
> Are there any other data on this.
>
> IMHO awe-dropping is a change to the traditional pronunciation of
> English words that goes against the basic principle of alphabetic
> writing and increases miscommunication, and deviates from the other
> Englishes of the world hurting standardized pronunciation.  No good
> comes from awe-dropping.  Dropping "awe-dropping" is worth having a
> "bra" over.
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
>
>
>
>
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: "Gordon, Matthew J."
>> Subject: Re: postvocalic /l/
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> Because it's been several months since Tom shared this particular
>> irrational fear, I'd like to offer some perspective for anyone who
>> might have missed the responses to his earlier posts on this.
>>
>> 1. In most of North America, 'on' and 'off' are pronounced with
>> the same phoneme. This includes those areas where the low back
>> vowel merger is found (i.e. where 'cot' and 'caught' come to be
>> homophones) but also the traditional South and Midland regions of
>> the US. It's only in the traditional North that 'on' is pronounced
>> with an unrounded vowel and 'off' with a rounded one, and guess
>> which region Tom represents.
>>
>> 2. Even for those dialects that use the same phoneme in 'on' and
>> 'off' there would normally be strong allophonic differences
>> between the vowels involving nasalization (with 'on') and
>> shortening (for 'off'). For non-linguists, this means that the
>> vowels are not pronounced the same and therefore a distinction
>> could be detected even if (for some reason) the final consonants
>> in the words were inaudible.
>>
>> 3. /l/ vocalization and deletion is an extremely common phenomenon
>> found to varying degrees in many (perhaps most or even all)
>> varieties of English around the world. There is no such tendency,
>> as far as I know, for similar deletion of either /n/ or /f/ at the
>> end of words except maybe in consonant clusters.
>>
>> 4. "steward", really????
>>
>>
>> -Matt Gordon
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
>> Of Tom Zurinskas [truespel at HOTMAIL.COM]
>> Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 7:19 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: postvocalic /l/
>>
>> 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
>>
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