Polish L/

 --- Josh Brandt-Young wrote:

> In fact, as a native Polish speaker, I can say with confidence that in most
> people's pronunciation, this *is* IPA [w]. There are cases in the speech of
> certain areas (Lublin, for example) and actors/news announcers where this
> will come through as a velarised lateral, like the Russian /l/ before a back
> vowel. But for 95% of Poles it's a [w] straight-up.
Yes. I actually know some people who do pronounce _l/_ like a velarised
lateral, but as far as I can tell, they have to meet one of the following
criteria, or rather both of them:
- usually they are older people
- they have their origins in the East of Poland. This could be Lublin, but it
is more frequent among people who were "repatriated" from those regions of
pre-war Poland, that had become part of the USSR during and after WWII. The
majority of them were resettled in those newly acquired territories which had
belonged to Germany earlier, notibly in Lower Silesia.

Since this generation is slowly dying out, one can safely state that [w] is the
standard now, the velarized /l/ being rather an old-fashioned deviation.

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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