Back in my second year of Americorps, some of our teammates were making fun of myself and C-Rae-sy for the oft-times perplexing way we said certain words. Keep in mind that I am from Mississippi and that C-Rae-sy is from Arkansas. Our teammates got a big kick out of the way we said words that happened to have an L in the middle, following a vowel.
Although our states are not immediate neighbors, and our Southern accents are not identical, C-Rae-sy and I both pronounced these types of words the same. We tended to drop the mid-point L out, like so:
Wolf: Wuf
Gulf: Guff (as in Guffa Mexico)
Talk: Tawk
Calm: Cahm (actually, the vowels elongate to the point where it can sound like Cahomb).
The major exception I make to this is ‘Milk’, which has an L, even if its very short. However, C-Rae-sy pronounces it as Meeyuk!
Is this a known phenomenon of Southern accents? Do only some Southern accents do this or most or all? Is this a feature of non-Southern English language dialects?
When you listen to someone say a word, what difference does it make what you feel in your tongue? And how do you know how they spell a word when you hear them say it?
In this part of the country, you cannot hear the difference between “stalk” and “stock”. It seems that the Midwest accent flattens the short “o” so that it approaches a short “a” sound, but further west, that distinction gets lost. Sometimes you will hear the “l” in “caulk” pronounced, just to avoid sounding vulgar. Or, in reference to logger’s boots, the work actually becomes “cork”.
I find it strange that while dropping the L from some words, like bulb, people here in south Georgia pronounce the L in walk, talk, chalk, and… salmon.
Interestingly enough, she must have totally missed the fact that almost no part of that movie takes place anywhere near North Dakota. Most of it was set in Minneapolis and near Brainerd, which is on the opposite side of Minnesota from Fargo. Perhaps the opening scene was in or near Fargo, but the rest was eastern Minnesota.
Fair 'nough. I suppose I shoulda said, ‘our communities don’t neighbor each other’, as I am from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and she’s from central Arkansas. We grew up almost five hundred miles and an eight-hour-drive from each other.
Y’all brought up a few more examples:
Chalk: Chawk.
Caulk: Cawk or even CAHW-k with an emphasis on the first syllable to make sure it’s not mistaken for… well, you know.
So it appears L is blending into W, at least in my dialect. Interestingly, ‘dialect’ I’d pronounce as “DIE-lect”, but it’s not a word you’d use in everyday speech. If it were, I could see it morphing into “dieyek” or something similar.
In my upper appalachian dialect, word-final /l/ has become labialized (ie, more like /w/). I considered naming my son something that had the nickname Cal, but people thot i wwas saying Cow. Grrr.
