Consonants L

Although American English is often reported to show a “clear” [l] in syllable onsets and a “dark,” or velar,  in syllable codas, articulatory evidence suggests that American English shows a velar form in syllable onsets, and Southern English follows this pattern. In syllable codas, vocalization occurs. The term vocalization has been used loosely. It has been applied to what would be better referred to as deletion, as in  for wolf. This deletion may occur before labials (except [b]), and the forms [hεp] for help, [sεf] in -self compounds, [t^hwev] for twelve, and [houp] for holp (old preterit of help) are stereotypically Southern. True vocalization of syllable-coda l is widespread in North American English and seems to be particularly common in the South. The result is a phone with the value of [o] or [w], as in fill . This phone is sometimes described as  but is normally rounded. The acoustic similarity between  and [w] has made vocalization of l difficult to study, and hence details of its distribution are unavailable.

Linking  is apparently common in hiatus positions, as in sell it  . Intrusive , as in saw it  , is known to occur irregularly. However, vocalization can also occur in hiatus.

Older Southern speech did show a truly “clear” [l] in one context: between front vowels, as in silly, Billy, and Nelly. Some elderly Southerners still show this variant.