What is "barred-L"

[hzenk at PDX.EDU]

> OK, my two cents here:
>
nayka wEXT (me too)...

> lateral fricative is easy to pronounce for most Europeans: the tip of
> the tongue
> presses against the alveolar ridge (just as continental L), then you breathe
> through this (you feel the air at the sides of your tongue!)
>

That's very true.  Problems however arise because to say barred-l in a word such
as "Lush" (L=barred-l), one must then MOVE one's tongue from that part of one's
mouth to another.  For some reason, this seems to be a difficult trick for many
native English speakers to master (judging by experience in our community Chinuk
Wawa classes for the Grand Ronde tribe).

>
> Also: forget about English TH or - even worse - a combination of L and
> TH. TH is
> in a way the opposite of "barred L" (or "voiceless L"), as the air passes
> through in the middle, and the sides of the tongue are closed.
>

Funny you should say that.  In a continuing series of experimental instructions
to help our students grasp these sounds, we have recently hit upon the
following:  "Try to say English 'thl', but without letting the tip of your
tongue slip out between your front teeth as it does when you say English 'th'.
I.e., try to say 'thl' WITHOUT sticking your tongue through your teeth."  This
actually seems to help some people.  We've found through experience that if you
can get people to put their tongues in more-or-less the right parts of their
mouths, they can start getting better with practice.  Only they need to have
someplace to start from.  I too used to think that barred-l is basically an
easy sound for English speakers, but teaching experience has shown me that
theory does not match fact here.  Beginners have a tendency to slur it into a
"sh" (alveo-palatalized) fricative, which don't sound right no how.

And I think someone else in this discussion has commented on the closeness of tL
(Americanist barred-lambda) and L (barred-l).  Indeed, some Chinuk Wawa speakers
in some areas use tL in place of our L:  e.g. at Neah Bay they say tLosh 'good',
vs. our Lush.  Boas recorded only one unejected voiceless lateral for Lower and
Kathlamet Chinook, which he wrote as "L".  While it has been conventional to
transliterate this as Americanist barred-lambda, comparison with later Upper
Chinook recordings make it pretty obvious (I believe; Chinookanists may want to
comment) that Lower and Kathlamet Chinook actually had a barred-l:barred-lambda
contrast.  The fact that Boas confused the two may be one indication of how
alike they sound.  Saying "tl" as if it were English gets you pretty close to
barred-lambda.  The priests who composed Catholic Chinuk Wawa materials usually
write both barred-l and barred-lambda as "tl"...i.e., about as Boas did.  Henry
the Other.

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