Hello everybody.
I thank you all for the comments made on
the subject
phonetics, which I've raised
here.
Now about what Piotr said:
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/).
So is the portuguese final
/l/. The tongue raises towards the soft palate as you say, and its tip sticks on
the alveolar ridge.
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 (...)
Right, that's the same as in
portuguese. Our /l/ is never clear, and before a vowel it's still alveolar, but
somewhat dark (because of the raised tongue).
Personally I think in portuguese the
pre-vowel and final /l/ are the same, with a difference. In the first case, the
tongue must release itself from the
alveolar ridge so that the following vowel could be heard, and that makes the
impression of an
articulated sound, although dark. In the
second case the tongue makes the same initial movement, but stays at
the
alveolar ridge till the vocal chords stop
releasing air (ex. Sol - sun). The final /l/ is the same as /l/ before a
consonant, as occurs in words like [alto] (verb stop!; adj.
tall, high; noun top, protuberance, etc.).
So those two /l/ in portuguese sound to me
rather similar to the american english ones.
It can happen though, that some people may
pronunciate the pre-vowel /l/ more clearly, with the tongue in a more
neutral
position, as you say. It may be so, I don't
know, but at least I and the people around me pronunciate it in a
darkish
manner, with a raised tongue.
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.
The people I know in Poland
(Wolsztyn, województwo Poznańskie, Wielkopolska) like to pronunciate the
[ł] as /ł/, so I
heard it all the time. And now I understand why the
portuguese final /l/ and the polish /ł/, although similar sounds,
seemed
to me a little different: ours is alveolar,
yours is dental. I've seen in some portuguese phonetics books the
representation
of our final and preconsonantal /l/ as [ł],
the velarised [l]. In the same books our pre-vowel /l/ is represented as [l]
(as
in french, british english, polish). I
assume it represents only the alveolar clear sound. So, if it's true that some
people
(me included) don't pronunciate it clearly
but darkly, can we still represent it as [l]? Or should we write
[ł]?
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.
In portuguese, as you well
said, there's also the [w] sound, represented by the letter /u/ or /o/ in
nonstressed positions.
I should make a remark : there are some differences
between the brazilian and the european variants of portuguese,
and they are not only phonetic, but also in
lexicon and even synthax. The final /l/ in Brazil as undergone vocalisation
and
is now pronunciated [w] (as in polish and
in many different languages, as you stated very clearly). But in Portugal
it
remains [ł], and that's clearly established
everywhere in the country.
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.
Yes, precisely!
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.
Maybe. I said before it seemed to me rather similar to
the american one, but it can be darker... you are the linguist and
more trained on this question than
me.
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?
The tip of the tongue touches the back of
the upper teeth and the alveolar ridge simultaneously. Maybe it's not
typically
alveolar nor typically dental. The fact is
it has to be different from the polish sound, because one time I and a polish
friend
spent a hour trying to pronunciate each
other's sound unsuccesfully. Somehow we found it always different.
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.
As I just said, in Portugal
it's not suffering vocalisation. In Brazil it may be in the final stages of it
or, instead, the vocalisation
may already have been
completed, that I don't know.