The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread

[Space60]

Does anyone have an /l/ sound in "both" or "only" (before the /n/)? I don't have such myself but I've heard it. I think my brother has "olnly" for "only".

[Znex]

/l/ epenthesis does emerge often in American dialects, so far as I know, since /l/ is so strongly velarised it can easily be interchanged with the final glide in /-ʊ/ diphthongs.

[Linguoboy]

Bolth I've heard from a fair number of speakers, but I don't have it myself. I'm trying to recall if I have any instances of hypercorrection since I'm much more likely to delete coda /l/ entirely (e.g. folk, yolk, walk).

[Salmoneus]

Bolth I've heard from a fair number of speakers, but I don't have it myself. I'm trying to recall if I have any instances of hypercorrection since I'm much more likely to delete coda /l/ entirely (e.g. folk, yolk, walk).

...? Are you implying that some people insert /l/ even into words like folk, yolk and walk?

As a non-American, I can sort of imagine 'bolth', but 'folk', 'yolk' or 'walk' with an /l/ would just sound bizarre...

[Linguoboy]

I've definitely heard both folk and yolk with /l/ before. The latter is common enough that Wiktionary lists it as an alternative US pronunciation.

[Travis B.]

I have heard of folk with /l/ myself, in the context of folk music (IIRC one of folk as in folk music and one of folk in other contexts often has /l/, but I cannot recall at the moment which is which).

[Travis B.]

I do have to note that in the dialect here, /oʊ oʊl/ sound awfully similar, being [o oʊ] except before vowels and often word-finally, where both are [oʊ] and are distinguished only by that [oʊ] from /oʊ/ is not quite as far back as [oʊ] from /oʊl/.

[Pabappa]

Bolth I've heard from a fair number of speakers, but I don't have it myself. I'm trying to recall if I have any instances of hypercorrection since I'm much more likely to delete coda /l/ entirely (e.g. folk, yolk, walk).

...? Are you implying that some people insert /l/ even into words like folk, yolk and walk?

As a non-American, I can sort of imagine 'bolth', but 'folk', 'yolk' or 'walk' with an /l/ would just sound bizarre...

"folk" and "yolk" are common with /l/, yes. Probably much less so for "walk" ... there seems to be something special about the /ol/ sequence. But I think I remember this coming up before and one board member from Louisiana saying that he did have the /l/ in "walk", too.

Looking back it might be explained that "yolk" and "folk" have the [ʊ] element in the standard pronunciation, but "walk" never had any [ʊ], so there is no opportunity for a shift of /ʊ/ > /l/.

[Salmoneus]

To be fair, 'balk' and 'baulk' sometimes have epenthetic /l/ in this country... and 'falcon' almost always does.

[Raholeun]

What about to sulk?

[Zju]

How do you pronounce -land when it's a suffix, or the second part of a placename? [lənd]? [lænd]? Something else?

[Linguoboy]

How do you pronounce -land when it's a suffix, or the second part of a placename? [lənd]? [lænd]? Something else?

It depends on the placename. Maryland with /lɪn/ is a state on the Eastern Seaboard. Maryland with /lænd/ is some kind of Catholic-themed amusement park.

[mèþru]

/lænd/ in all cases, but everyone looks weird at me when I use it for Maryland.

[Travis B.]

I pronounce -land in placenames with -/lənd/, which I realize as -[lɘ̃ːnt]~[lɘ̃ːnd]~[lɘ̃ːn]. (The vowel is identical with the stressed vowel /ɪ/ and is very distinct from the stressed vowel /ʌ/.)

[Pabappa]

What about to sulk?

I've never heard that without the L, since it'd collide with suck.

[Zaarin]

I have heard of folk with /l/ myself, in the context of folk music (IIRC one of folk as in folk music and one of folk in other contexts often has /l/, but I cannot recall at the moment which is which).

I have /l/ in folk music but not in other instances of folk. This is lexical for me: I don't have intrusive /l/ in other circumstances (unless you count words like almond and falcon which I have literally never heard without /l/).

How do you pronounce -land when it's a suffix, or the second part of a placename? [lənd]? [lænd]? Something else?

Like Linguoboy said, depends on the word. Maryland, England, Newfoundland have something like [ɫə͂ʔd̚]; Queensland, highland have something intermediary like [ɫɛ̃ʔd̚]; Swaziland and Zululand have [ɫænd̚].

[jal]

there seems to be something special about the /ol/ sequence

In Dutch, /ol/ [ɔl] was historically replaced by [ɔu] or [ʌu]. Also, word-final /əl/ sounds more like [ɔɫ], so /o/ and /l/ seem to have a special relationship...


JAL

[Nortaneous]

/-lənd/ (maybe /-lɨnd/? I'm not sure) is the default, but Swaziland and Zululand take fully stressed /-lænd/.

Maryland is theoretically /merɨlənd/ but in practice is more like [me˞ːlən].

Does anyone have an /l/ sound in "both" or "only" (before the /n/)? I don't have such myself but I've heard it. I think my brother has "olnly" for "only".

Common enough that someone a generation up from me once told me she was made fun of for *not* having l-insertion in "both". You can check Twitter for misspellings - "bolth" got a lot of results when I tried it.

The person in question did have long-distance assimilation of /əw/ to [o] in "social" -- where [o] is the expected realization of /əw/ immediately preceding /l/ -- and I'm not sure about "only". Another good test case would be "provolone".

[mèþru]

Edit to my previous post: alternating with /ɐ/ in unstressed syllables

[Linguoboy]

Like Linguoboy said, depends on the word. Maryland, England, Newfoundland have something like [ɫə͂ʔd̚]; Queensland, highland have something intermediary like [ɫɛ̃ʔd̚]; Swaziland and Zululand have [ɫænd̚].

I think my distribution may be like Nortaneous': default /lənd/ (which will often be realised [ɫən ~ ɫɪn]) but Maryland is always [ɫɪn] because I'm subconsciously imitating my father's pronunciation (as with Baltimore and other local place names). Queensland and highland (and Zealand) group with established European names for me whereas I reserve /lænd/ for newer polities (Puntland), corporate names (like theme parks and retailers, e.g. Disneyland, Timberland), and metaphorical uses (e.g. limboland, Jesusland, woo-woo-land).