[Ads-l] cal-ving

Stanton McCandlish smccandlish at GMAIL.COM
Sat Sep 14 19:45:36 UTC 2019


Right, some of them push non-initial *l* sounds toward *w*, or merged into
the vowel: "Biw co'ectors cawin' my mobiw phone aw day." Or kind of a
mingled *wl* sound.  Sometimes affects *r*, too. Couldn't tell you what
British (*Brwitish*?) region[s] that's from, though. I talked
Buckinghamshire as a kid, and recognise some well-defined English accents,
like Hull and North Yorkshire, but there are so many.

On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 9:11 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> Maybe it’s the law of conservation of /l/s.  I’ve noticed that British
> speakers, at least the ones who narrate my audiobooks, avoid pronouncing
> the (first) /l/ in “vulnerable”.  I agree with the suggestion in your last
> sentence—“calving” is probably opaque when applied to glaciers, especially
> for those who didn’t grow up on a farm or ranch.
>
> LH
>
>
>
> > On Sep 13, 2019, at 8:39 PM, Stanton McCandlish <smccandlish at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > There's at least one British accent in which the *l* in *calf* is
> > pronounced (e.g., listen to the song "The Golden Calf" by Prefab Sprout,
> > 1988), but I've never heard a North American say it as "callf".  Maybe
> > someone's overcorrecting, not recognizing *calving* as derived from
> *calf*,
> > and thinking instead of names like *Calvin* and *Calvary*.
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 4:32 PM David Daniel <dad at coarsecourses.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> CNN reporter, about a big-ass chunk of glacier calving in Alaska,
> >> definitely
> >> called it cal-ving. WTF? Is that a one-off, a trend, a movement, a
> >> rebellion, a sea change, or we don't know?
> >> David
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
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