Re: Velarization (was: English: Thou)

> X-Sender: ray.brown@pop.freeuk.net
> Date:         Tue, 27 Jun 2000 19:27:30 +0100
> From: Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
>
> At 1:25 am +0000 27/6/00, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
> >>From: Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
> >>Subject: Velarization (was: English: Thou)
> >>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 12:27:29 +0100
> >
> >> >I've noticed that there's a lot of extreme velarization in some urban
> >> >dialects I've heard on British sitcoms and dramas like "Eastenders".
> >> >Is that really that common?
> >>
> >>Yep - very common in London and its environs.
> >>
> >>Ray.
> >
> >Quick question: How does velarization work? What does it sound like? It's
> >one of a few phonetic traits that I don't understand.
>
> At 10:31 pm -0500 26/6/00, Danny Wier wrote:
> >>From: Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>
> .....
> >Velarization (or pharyngealization) is a secondary feature of consonants and
> >vowels.  IPA marks consonants with a tilde through the letter, while vowels
> >are followed with a superscript turned script a.  Velarized consonants are a
> >feature of Arabic and Irish Gaelic; in the former they are called "emphatic"
> [snip]
> >The same way you advance your tongue forward as though you were uttering the
> >vowel [i] for "slender" consonants, you move your tongue backward as you
>
> Yep - and the 'dark' and 'light' _l_ in the Slav langs similar to the the
> broad & slender _l_ in Gaelic.  Indeed, the IPA sybolism is derived from
> the Polish symbol for dark-l which is like a _l_ with a tilde through the
> letter.
>
> In English (and Old French) it means that post-vocalic /l/ in blocked
> syllables are velarized.  But in the colloquial speech of London and much
> of SE England it has become pronounced as [w].  This also happened in Old
> french spelling as is shown in the spelling, e.g. belle (final -e was
> pronounced, therefore the syllabification was: be-l@) ~ beau [bj&w].
>
> In colloquial London speech and much of the SE of England, _bell_ is
> pronounced [bEw].  Where it occurs in English it tends to shorten the
> preceding vowel as well so that, e.g. both _filled_ and _field_ are
> pronounced [fIwd].
>
> I believe in Polish 'dark-l' is also generally pronounced [w] - but I'm not
> entirely certain on that.
Remember Mr. Walenza <Wa\-lenza> /wawenza/?

I vaguely remember a large shouting match on sci.lang --- I think the
upshot was that in Warsaw (standard) Polish, /w/ is spelled both <w>
and <\-l>, with no phonemic difference --- in fact the <\-l> spelling
was said to be giving way to <w> --- and that except for stage
language the phonemes merged a long time ago. (Might be pre-WWII,
might be even earlier, I don't remember that detail).

As usual, some dialects still maintain the difference.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)