Re: laterals (was: Pharingials, /l/ vs. /r/ in Southeast Asia)

I try not to read English pronunciation threads, because when I do,
I can seldom keep myself from participating...

John:
> Racsko Tamas scripsit:
>
> >   But who says that English 'sy' in <Sue> 'syoo' and 'sh' in <shoe>
'shoo'
> > can't both be an [S] for an Indonesian, or an [s] for a Finn [not for an
> > Anglophone, of course]?
>
> AFAIK with /sj/ all dialects have either dropped the palatalization (as
> with "Sue" /su/) or have gone all the way to /S/, as with "issue" /ISu/).
> Nobody says /sju/ or /Isju/ any more.
/sju:t/, 'suit', is sometimes to be heard.

> In the case of /rj/, palatalization has been lost everywhere:  "true" is
> /tr\u/.
Or /IU/ in (S) Welsh English. But /rj/ survives foot-internally and
intervocalically in e.g. 'virulent', 'purulent', 'serrulate',
'ferula', though not usually in, say, 'corrugate' or 'garrulous'.
(As for 'irrumate', it is not a word I recall ever having heard,
unless perhaps it was thrusting through my own lips.)

> The case of /tj/, /dj/, /nj/, and I think /lj/ is interesting, as the
> split is not lexical but dialectal: "tune" became /tun/ in North America,
> stayed /tjun/, in conservative British speech, and moved to /tSun/
> in advanced British dialects and Australian.  Similarly with d:dj:dZ
> and n:nj:J.
j is lost generally after C in East Anglia (bootiful moozic), and
lost American-style after coronals in indigenous North London.

lj, though, is a different story. As far as I can tell, it is
just disappearing over time, so that hardly anybody nowadays
would say /slju:/ for 'slew' (the noun, not the verb), while no
young person is likely to say 'lure' with a /lj/ (ergo I myself
am no longer Young). That's word-initial /lj/; I haven't tried
asking people how they say 'curlew'.

--And.

Reply