"folk" with an L

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Mar 13, 2010, at 4:53 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:

> In 2006 the actor Peter Weller (_RoboCop_) was an adjunct faculty
> member at
> Syracuse University and appeared in a History Channel show on ancient
> Greece.  In it, he assures us that "Homer was not just a Top-Forty
> folksinger."
>
> He pronounces the "L" in "folksinger" very distinctly.  I've never
> heard
> that before; nor, apparently, has OED.

i'm sure we've been over this variation before -- for words ending in
lk and lm, at least.

setting aside l-vocalizers, for -lk words there are two classes (for
me and for NOAD2):

(L-1) words where the l is pronounced: elk, whelk; ilk, bilk, milk,
silk; bulk, hulk, skulk, sulk

(L-2) words where the l is not pronounced: ca(u)lk, balk, chalk, talk,
stalk, walk; folk, yolk

(you will note that the classes are distinguished by the vowels of the
words in question.)

now, the complexity: for each of the words in list (L-2), there are
people who sometimes, or always, pronounce the l -- but different l-
pronouncers have the l in different words.

.....

again setting aside l-vocalizers, for -lm there are again two classes,
but not the same two classes:

(M-1) words where the l is pronounced: realm, elm, helm, overwhelm; film

(M-2) words where the l is variably pronounced: balm, qualm, alms,
calm, palm, psalm

(again, the classes are distinguished by their vowels.)

and of course there is person-to-person variation: for each word in
list (M-2), there are people who never pronounce the l, people (many
of them, i think) who have both pronunciations, and people who always
pronounce the l.  again, for any particular person, there is likely to
be word-to-word variation.

by the way, reflecting consciously on what you do, or might, say can
be misleading; it's not a hopeless strategy, but it's decidedly
imperfect.

arnold

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