Odp: Phonetics

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 804
Date: 2000-01-09

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Iuri Gaspar
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Saturday, January 08, 2000 7:46 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Phonetics

Iuri writes:
I'm a native portuguese speaker and I'm sort of learning polish
over this last 4 years.
My ear finds different 4 similar sounds, and I'd like to know how
do they differenciate if so. And they are:

1 - The portuguese final l (in Portugal) - ex. Mal (badly)
2 - The brazillian final l 
3 - The glide [w] - ex. Mau (Bad)
4 - The polish dashed l

In portuguese, there is an audible differente between "Mal" and "Mau",
but I bellieve that for untrained ears it may be difficult to distinguish.
I find the brazillian final l more close to the glide [w], but somehow I
hear it in another way. The same counts for the polish dashed l, as
I sometimes hear it closer to our final l, others closer to the glide [w].
But again, I never hear the same exact sound as in my language.
By the way, where can we put the final english l? (ex. ill)


Another question. I find the L (not final, articulated) pronunciation 
rather different among different languages. As an example I give the
portuguese one (which I find similar to the english one, ex.
"lago" and "lake") and the polish one (brightly articulated).
 
First, a general remark. L-like sounds are "lateral" consonants, which means that the air from the lungs escapes at the sides of the tongue, while the tongue tip is actively involved in the articulation of the sound, making contact with the teeth, the alveolar ridge (i.e. the upper gum just behind the front teeth) or the hard palate. There are many other possibilities for laterals -- they may  be "coloured" by changing the position of the body of the tongue, have voiceless fricative counterparts (as in Welsh or Zulu) etc. I'll discuss only a few such sounds below.
 
 
Now let's begin with English.
 
English /l/ is "dark" when it's final or followed by a consonant (the technical term is "velarised"): the back of the tongue is raised towards the soft palate and the timbre of the consonant resembles a back vowel (/o/ or /u/). In some accents of English the tip of the tongue, instead of being pressed against the alveolar ridge (the upper gum), is lowered, and preconsonantal darl /l/ is realised as a back vowel or semivowel. In such cases we say that /l/ undergoes "vocalisation".
 
Before a vowel /l/ is "clear" (with the body of the tongue assuming a "neutral" position) in standard British English. In American English, however, /l/ usually has a darkish quality even in this position, and in Scottish English it is positively dark (in Irish English, for a change, /l/ is clear in all positions). All dialects agree in having clear, slightly palatalised /l/ before /j/ as in million.
 
The normal place of articulation in English is alveolar (the tongue-tip touches the upper gum just behind the front teeth). However, dark /l/ is assimilated to the following th iw words like filth or health, becoming a dental sound (the tongue tip touches the teeth).
 
 
In standard Polish, there were until recently two lateral phonemes: /l/, pronounced as an alveolar consonant, identical with the "clear" variant in British English (and with the normal articulation of /l/ in standard French, Italian or German), and /ł/, spelt Ł, ł in Polish orthography (use UTF-8 encoding in your browser to see it). Both derived from Proto-Slavic *l in palatalising and non-palatalising environments, respectively.
 
Many other Slavic languages (including Russian) preserve the dark lateral sound. In Polish, /ł/ was pronounced as a dental consonant (as in the typical English pronunciation of health). This pronunciation may still be heard but is associated with speakers of some regional dialects (especially in southeastern Poland) or the oldest generation of actors. In the modern standard pronunciation it has undergone vocalisation to [w] (in all positions), losing its lateral character.
 
To sum up, modern Polish has /l/ and /w/ as separate phonemes. The latter is spelt ł, with [w] as the normal pronunciation and [ł] as a very old-fashioned or dialectal variant.
 
 
Now back to your question. My knowledge of Portuguese phonetics is rather superficial, but my imression is that the Portuguese semivowel in mau is not really different from the sound of Polish ł or English w. All three can be transcribed with the same symbol [w]. It's quite possible that you've heard [ł] from some Poles who still have it in their native dialect or affect it for their own private satisfaction; hence perhaps your impression that (3) and (4) are different sounds.
 
Portuguese non-palatal /l/ before vowels sounds rather dark to my ear; it may be somewhat darker than American English /l/ in the same position. It certainly resembles the old Polish sound of /ł/, and I believe it's dental, too, rather than alveolar (unlike its English counterpart). Can you feel the position of your tongue tip when you say lago?
 
Final /l/ in Portuguese is in the final stages of vocalisation (which affected intervocalic /l/ a long time ago, producing alternations like sol [sg.] versus sóis [pl.]). I think that it is merging with /w/ and that for some speakers the merger is already complete, while others still maintain the difference by retaining traces of a lateral articulation (a raised tongue tip? there could also be a contrast in the degree of lip-rounding). If so, it may be an interesting case of sound change in progress. It should be reported somewhere. I'll try to find some more information about it.
 
Piotr