I have a question to American English speakers: do you folks pronounce words with initial 'l' such as "love", "leaf", etc. with a dark, velar 'l', or a clear one? Or to put it more simply: are all American English l's dark? Sorry if my question seems stupid to anyone, but I need to know this.
dark [l] in US English
Many North American English dialects lack the "light l" (that is, [l]) altogether, and solely use the "dark l" (that is, [5]) in all positions. My own dialect uses neither of these, but what it does use, [L\] and its semivowelized and fully vocalized versions [M\] and [M], is effectively what one would get if one took [5], made it purely velar rather than merely velarized, and optionally turned it into a semivowel, or when syllabic, into an actual vowel.
Travis, thanks for your exhaustive answer. Can I ask out of curiosity what dialect you speak?
I can only tell you something about the difference between clear and dark L as the allophones of the same phoneme [l] in Received Pron. Clear l [l] is articulated with the tip, or blade of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge. In British English this could be illustrated with words such as "leaf" etc. - [l] stands before a vowel. This is aslo the standard pronunciation of 'l' in many other languages, eg. Spanish or French. The other variant of "l" in British English (RP) is the so-called dark l [5], which is articulated not only with the tip of the tounge touching the alveolar ridge, but also with the back part of the tongue touching the soft palate, or velum - that's why the sound is described as velarised. This sound can be found in words such as "bell", "call" - at the end of a word, "sold" - before another consonant, or "bundle" - when [5] is syllabic.
They're mostly dark for me, too. Actually, they might all be, come to think of it.
>>Travis, thanks for your exhaustive answer. Can I ask out of curiosity what dialect you speak?<<
The dialect spoken here in Milwaukee, WI - note though that it likely has internal dialectal variation, considering that I have at least once been pinned down to a particular suburb (correctly) by accent alone by someone who had no way of knowing where I was from otherwise.
The dialect spoken here in Milwaukee, WI - note though that it likely has internal dialectal variation, considering that I have at least once been pinned down to a particular suburb (correctly) by accent alone by someone who had no way of knowing where I was from otherwise.
I guess mine must be dark too. Might anybody have a recording of a light one? I'd really like to hear it.
If you want to hear what the light, or to be more accurate, the 'clear l' sounds like check out this link: http://accent.gmu.edu/searchsaa.php?function=detail&speakerid=70
The guy speaking is English, so he articulates clear ls in words such as: Stella, slabs, blue, please, vs. call, will, also - these should be dark.
The guy speaking is English, so he articulates clear ls in words such as: Stella, slabs, blue, please, vs. call, will, also - these should be dark.