A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y but ...

[matt_mcl]

D’oh! Serves me right for trusting my phonetics prof without asking any actual Poles.

[Fern_Forest]

you know, this is my most successful post ever. I will probably never again reach these levels. Sigh, it’s all downhill now. Here’s to 39 responses.

[pulykamell]

actually, this is pretty interesting for me. So you’re saying the Polish “l” can be pronounced as a “lj” (that’s palatalized, right? Like n-tilde in Spanish?) in certain dialects. That makes sense, because I know Ukrainians and Slovenians have that sound in their language. However, if I am understanding this correctly, that’s different from a velarized “l,” right?

[Johanna]

*Nem, the clear l is the one that would be palatalized. In opposition to the dark l being unpalatalized.

There’s the same opposition in Turkish, where l is always clear with front vowels (e, i, ö, ü) and dark with back vowels (a, ï, o, u). When Turkish borrows an Arabic word with clear l before a back vowel, they have to mark it with a circumflex to show that it’s clear. For example: lûtfen (‘please’) — clear l, back u. A combination that is not native to Turkish. In Arabic the l is always clear, with one exception: in the name Allah it’s velarized.

There’s the same opposition in Irish and Russian. Clear l with front vowels in those languages is palatalized. With back vowels it’s dark l. In Irish sometimes dark l may tend to be a little velarized. This explains all those silent vowels in Irish spelling: they insert silent front vowels to show that a letter is palatalized with a back vowel, as in lean ‘follow’, pronounced l’an. And they insert silent back vowels to show that a letter is unpalatalized with a front vowel, as in laí ‘pole’, pronounced li. In Russian they use the “soft sign” (miagkii znak) to show a palatalized consonant before a back vowel. They used to have a “hard sign” to do the reverse but somehow that’s obsolete now.

In English the pattern is totally different: always clear l at the beginning of a word, always dark l in the middle and end of a word.

In Italian the l is always clear, without exception. Dark l does not exist in Italian. It drives me crazy when classical music radio announcers mispronounce “Vivaldi” with the dark l — “Vivawlldi”. Aaargh! That’s not Italian!

[friedo]

*Originally posted by Mousseduck *
**

*Originally posted by Freido *
I have observed that the Brits put less effort into their H’s than Americans, making the British H closer to a vowel than a consonent. Thus, many Brits are inclined to say “an historic” whereas most Americans say “a historic.”

I pronounce H sounds and use ‘a’ before them rather than ‘an’ in everyday speech. However when I’m writing or being more careful with my speech (not using slang, not dropping the final ‘g’ from words ending in ‘ing’ etc) I use ‘an’. eg an hotel, an historic event. I tend to think of ‘an’ as being correct even when the H is pronounced strongly. Is that wrong? **

I don’t think it’s wrong, just different. If you pronounce “historic” with a lazy-H, then it makes sense to put “an” there. Since the a/an rule depends on pronounciation rather than spelling, it is bound to be slightly different in different English dialects.

[matt_mcl]

*Originally posted by pulykamell *
actually, this is pretty interesting for me. So you’re saying the Polish “l” can be pronounced as a “lj” (that’s palatalized, right? Like n-tilde in Spanish?) in certain dialects.

Palatalized “l” isn’t exactly /lj/ like English “million”; it’s the “gl” in the Italian “degli sbagli”, a light “l” but with the body of your tongue against your hard palate.

[Doobieous]

*Originally posted by pulykamell *
**actually, this is pretty interesting for me. So you’re saying the Polish “l” can be pronounced as a “lj” (that’s palatalized, right? Like n-tilde in Spanish?) in certain dialects. That makes sense, because I know Ukrainians and Slovenians have that sound in their language. However, if I am understanding this correctly, that’s different from a velarized “l,” right? **

Well, velar pertains to the vellum or soft palate at the back of your mouth. A velar nasal for instance is the ng sound in sing (but no hard g sound at the end). It’s commonly found in Tagalog for instance, where it’s represented by “ng” as in “ngayon” - now. A palatal n would be further forward, on the hard palate of the mouth.

According to here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/l-sounds.html , English has a velar l, which occurs post-vocalic (after vowels). Palatal l is indeed what you find in Iberian Spanish in “ll” (as opposed to Latin American where it became voiced as y). Portuguese also has it and represents it as “lh”.