Re: USAGE: pronouncing "l", "needs washed"

> Paul Bennett
>
> FWIW, as an English speaker (capital E), I have the following vowel rymes:
>
> walk has the same vowel as board, caught and fore
> wok  has the same vowel as hot, flop and gone
>
> Lars, And or Fabian (having heard me in person) - Can you tell me
> the ASCII-IPA for each of those sounds?
I don't offhand know what any of the quasi-standard systems do. But I
would write /wO:k/, /kO:t/ vs. /wOk/, /hOt/, & trust people to
understand that /O:/ is standardly written with turned c, while
/O/ is standardly written with turned script a (sometimes Q is
used for this).

I can't remember your voice accurately enough to be absolutely
sure, but I would imagine that phonetically your /O:/ is somewhere
a little below [o], while your /O/ is a little above [Q] (= turned
script a). It depends how estuarial you are -- not very, iirc.

--And.

ps.
(a) "needs washed" is typically Scottish. Oddly, "needs/wants
washing" is syntactically much the more peculiar.

(b) /wAlk/, /tAlk/ - totally new to me & I can't imagine
how/where/when they could have originated.

Nicole said:
> I distinctly say /balm/, as well as /kalm/ and /kwalm/ and /alms/,
> is this abnormal?  I *am* a native speaker, but maybe I just have
> problems - are you a native speaker Jerry?
I've heard this mentioned as a sporadic phenomenon, analysed as a
spelling pronunciation. If so, you, or whoever your primary source
of English exposure was, apparently generalized the spelling
pronunciation to all cases of <lm> (contrast "often" versus "soften").