Over the past 40+ years or so, ever since my ear began being “tuned” more finely to pronunciation of words, via various vocal pedagogy studies, foreign language studies, etc., I have noticed a certain class of persons that has a strange pronunciation pattern. Now, this pattern isn’t a regional accent, but occurs in the same class of persons, widely separated by economic, social and educational status, as well as geography. Yet, they all belong to one class of persons (which I won’t identify, since some asshat would then call me a racist).
Examples of the consistent, idiosyncratic pronunciation of certain words by this group of persons:
- children~chirdren (or almost as often, chiwdren)
- million~miwyon
- killed~kihwed
Since this problem with the “l” or “ll” sound seems to be pervasive within this group, despite geography, education or social and economic status, I have begun to wonder if there might not be some genetically influenced predisposition to an inability to accurately hear and reproduce the “l” and “ll” sounds, as they occur in English, in this group. Certainly I do know persons within this general class who are able to hear and reproduce these sounds accurately and do so, but in my experience (which may, of course, not be a truly representative sample, though gathered over 40+ years and exposure to folks in 46 of the 48 contiguous states), they are not the norm.
Just an idle pondering that pops into my head now and then…
Note: I did not attempt to reproduce pronunciation markings as would be found in most linguistic studies or most dictionaries, as I’m not quite sure that most folks really understand those markings nowadays, and besides, making sure they reproduced accurately on all platforms on all browsers may be problematic as well. Or not. On both counts. *heh* If you have no problems with common pronunciation guides, please don’t assume I am being condescending.
Jeez, dunno wot yer on about. We’re a weird mob down here. So, lessee .. ain’t no kings, Presdidents, Dicktaters. The place is mostly run by Parliament.
My, Davo, that was certainly much ado about nothing… related to this post.
Yer, well, whatever.
Haha! You know, you may have something there. Here’s the thing, I think I know what class of persons you speak of, and I am not in that class, but I also seem to have a problem with pronunciation when the L is in the middle of a word.
I often exclude the L altogether on some (but not all) words with an L in the middle…
cold=code
old=ode
felt=fewt
halt=hawt
For me, though, it isn’t due to an inability to hear those sounds, I can hear them fine when others speak those words. It has to do with the way I heard it pronounced from my mother as I grew up, and she grew up in the hills (and I don’t mean Beverly).
It also depends on where the L is in the word. “Inability” sounds normal coming out of my mouth, for instance.
I think that’s the case with the aforementioned class of persons, too. That’s just how they heard their parents pronounce. And theirs before them, and so on.
Note: Sara worked very hard from a very young age to not sound like me. She has no sign of a southern twang and enunciates her L’s.
The problem with this thesis, Mel, is where did those parents learn this peculiar linguistic quirk? It’s not a regionalism. It’s not limited to one socio-economic class or educational level; it’s nearly universal.
(And yeh, I think I pretty well know the hills whereof you speak. THAT speech pattern is definitely regionally oriented. ;-))
..actually getting a tongue around ‘allegory;’ is sort of interesting .. but all us locals round the BBQ sort of fall about laughing.
“Allegory” could become an interesting exercise in diction after the sixth or eighth beer, Davo.
Blame the coal miners. I’ve listened to coal miners from Australia, the UK, and West Virginia, and when they’re speaking from behind a thin, mask or handkerchief, they all sound alike. Same reason why dropping the “L” is easier when one has an horrific cold. Little Johnny talks like Daddy and on and on until there’s an accent that even the grade school teachers are unawares they are using to teach ‘English’.
And since every last manjack in every last industrial society has somewhere along the family tree blasted tunnels or dug for something too deep for rational beings to go look for, twangs and drawls become commonplace enough to pass as dialect.
Interesting theory, Fits, but the particular class of persons I refer to is particularly meager in coal mining (or most other kinds of mining–and the kinds wherein this class are found in mining, the miners generally do not speak English as a first language, and are not found on this continent :-)), and the idiosyncratic pronunciation I reference is not common in the coal mining populations I have met. Of course, it’s been a few decades since I mixed with real coal miners, so perhaps my aural memory is flawed, and my sample set could be too limited to provide enough data for adequate supposition, let along theorizing.
This is just arm chair hypothesizing and blue-skying, anyway. 😉
Or not.
Who knows? Could be “Or yes” eh?
OK then let’s just speak the cold hard truth here, shall we? They do it because they think it sets them apart. That way of pronouncing things is theirs. It belongs to them. They’re proud of it, and that’s stupid.