Re: 'mispronunciation' of "engelang" (was: Introduction)

On 06/04/09 18:29:46, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Larry Sulky <larrysulky@...>
> wrote:
> > The points of articulation of /l/ and /k/ are much farther apart
> than those
> > of /l/ and /t/. Maybe that's why.
>
> It is no doubt the reason why in English, at least IML, the /l/ in
> /milk/ is realized as [ɫ].  I take it that's not the case in Dutch...
At one point in the history of English, l was commonly vocalised
between certain vowels and velar and labials (walk, palm), whereas it
only diphthongised the vowel before alveolars (bald).[1] These days, I
think "milk" is one of the most likely words to have the l vocalised
once again.

FWIW, my grandmother, from North Brabant, often uses the Dutch word for
"milk" when speaking English; it's clearly dissyllabic when she does
that.

[1]: Long time ago, sounds have changed since. English orthography is
less scary when you look at it in its historical context, though.

(I'm surprised, though, that you single out "milk" for a dark l. At the
risk of YAEPT, I thought that was universally used before any
consonant, in dialects that use dark l, and the dialectal varition is
what happened at morpheme boundaries and between/before
vowels. My dialect uses dark l throughout.)

--
Tristan.