Cork? I’m sorry, I’m all for live and let live, but that’s just wrong. It sounds nothing like those other words.
Also, not sure what “lawk” is.
Example:
Bambi: Who said ‘Lawks-a-lordy, my bottom’s on fire’?
Kendal Mintcake: [buzzing in] Lenin!
Bambi: Yes, well I can accept that, though the exact answer was Joan of Arc.
I’m the same. It’s not as much of an l as when I pronounce folder, but it’s there.
begs to differ.
if someone said ‘yoke’ of an egg, I’d be thinking they were making fun of the egg. I’ve always heard the ‘l’ in it, always said the ‘l’ in it, too.
What the ‘l’, I always say.
Try ‘caulk’ and ‘chalk’? callk…chok.
For you perhaps not, for me and (I just checked) my wife at least, it certainly does.
For me, folk and yolk both have elided ls, making the o pretty close to being a dipthong and the words more than one syllable but not quite two.
My accent is Great Lakes-midwestern / Appalachian-southern USA.
And, at least for the purposes of cute songs in popular entertainment, so is the “l” in “folk”…
http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Cletus_The_Slack-Jawed_Yokel!
Note the rhyme (not slant rhyme) of “folk” and the first syllable of “yokel”. “Folk” and “yoke” are a rhyme in that.
“Cork” and “walk” would be pretty similar sounding in parts of New England and maybe in some Souther US regions, too. You wouldn’t think New Englanders and Southerners had much in common, but they do dislike those Rs!
And in some of the flyover states, ‘wash’ and ‘marsh’ rhyme.
I recall a very short-lived TV series in the early '70s that involved an old man and and old woman meeting in the park, where he said something to the effect that he had aged like a fine wine and she replied that he best keep his cork in, and the got the middling pronunciation just close enough to get it past the censors.
Baltimore native here. We leave out the Ls in quite a few words:
yoke, foke, Sherlock Homes, poke-a dots…
Very occasionally you will hear an old-timer talk about “Odesmobile” cars…
Famous Orioles pitcher Jim Pommer…on the mound on a cahm, windless day…
'n I could gayo oown and oown, Hon.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I pronounce the L in Holmes.
See, Norfolk I would pronounce “NORfuhck”.
I say the “l” in “yolk.” Always have. Same with “folk.” It wasn’t until I think when I first read this thread that I realized many/most people don’t. I’m not sure how saying “yolk” is any more difficult than saying “folk.” They’re equally natural for me.
ETA: If you look at pretty much any American dictionary, you’ll find both the “l” less and the “l” pronunciation listed for “yolk,” wheras “folk” generally only has the “l”-less pronunciation listed. So enough people pronounce the “l” in “yolk” that it’s reflected in the dictionary. (And apparently, not enough do for “folk” for it to make it.)
What’s confusing? Baulk is a common enough word in the UK due to snooker (and is pronounced “bolk” )and “polk” is far less common but the nearest equivalent is polka and that’s where I’d take my pronunciation cue.
So that’s why they are pronounced the same.
I can manage it by rhyming it with bulk and hulk. But that makes a very different sounding word, as it loses the yo sound.
Holmes doesn’t.
FWIW.
My English accent (I learn the core of my English in primary school with Philadelphia-born nuns) is folk = foke, yolk = yoke also Polk = poke, chalk = choke.
Also, you need a gun to all my family’s head befores I pronounce the t in often.