Re: Rating Languages

Quoting David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:

> In a message dated 9/26/01 12:28:51 PM, dan@FEUCHARD.FSNET.CO.UK
> writes:
>
> << >     Who wrote this?  If you're a native English speaker, we've got
> a
> velar
>
> > "l" just about everywhere except word-initially, non?
> a) I'm not a native English speaker. I was a French monoglot until I
> was six.
> b) No, my idiolect doesn't have velar "l". >>
>
>     Huh...  Now that I go back, I have velar "l" just about everywhere,
> even in initial position, such as with the word "laugh" [L&f].  Sounds like
> "ullaugh", in English orthography.  Ah!  I got it.  Alveolar [l] only
> occurs before +front, -low vowels in my English, that's it.  In fact, I can
> get it before [E], too, though either is fine...
I think you're overgeneralizing -- it really does depend on dialect,
as I said.  Irish, reportedly, doesn't have velar [L] at all.  In my
dialect, it occurs only postvocalically.

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"If a man demands justice, not merely as an abstract concept,
but in setting up the life of a society, and if he holds, further,
that within that society (however defined) all men have equal rights,
then the odds are that his views, sooner rather than later, are going
to set something or someone on fire." Peter Green, in _From Alexander
to Actium_, on Spartan king Cleomenes III