postvocalic /l/

[Paul Johnston]

And in the Scots case, it goes back to the 15th century, too.

Paul Johnston  (an "l-dropper", too--it's an [o~U] post vocalically
for me)
On Mar 8, 2010, at 10:52 AM, Robin Hamilton wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Robin Hamilton <robin.hamilton2 at BTINTERNET.COM>
> Subject:      Re: postvocalic /l/
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Also, may I lodge a mild protest with regard to the barely-concealed
> linguistic chauvanism involved in complaints against the dropping
> of the
> post-vocalic "l", since this has been a standard part of Scottish
> vernacular
> rural speech since at least the eighteenth century, ever since
> Robert Burns
> (of sainted memory) ca'd the yows tae the knowes.
>
>                     Up gainst the wa', jimminy cricket.
>
> (We can't even *help saying it -- it was a systemic sound change,
> but.)
>
> The Wee M'Greegor
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Johnston" <paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU>
>
> quoting:
>
>>> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
>
>>> 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.
>
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