Re: Californian vowels [was Re: Liking German]

On Fri, 28 Sep 2001 21:29:23 -0400, John Cowan <cowan@...>
wrote:

>Thomas R. Wier scripsit:
>
>> > No, I'm not Southern Californian, but I know an acquaintance who has
>> > the very annoying speech impediment of pronouncing the word "milk"
>> > as /mELk/ (with velar l) and "because" as /b@kUz/. I cringe every
>> > time he says either of them :)
>>
>> Well, where's he from? That pronunciation of "because" is
>> actually widespread in Britain.
>
>It's what I've always said, and I render "milk" as something like /mlk/,
>and almost nobody can understand it.  My wife says it just disappears
>into the ether.
Hmmm.... this is odd... neither [mI5k] or [mE5k] seems right to me, but
what else could it be? Maybe the /I/ is centralized to be something like
[mI_"5k] or [m@\5k]? Hmm... it's even possible that the /l/ is realized as
something like a velar approximant. But I'm pretty sure it's still some
kind of /l/. I'm not sure what the vowel is, but if anything it seems less
like /I/ than /E/ or even /@/. "Milk" doesn't seem to rhyme with words like
"ilk" or "filk", but those are words learned from reading. But I've heard
TV ads that definitely sounded like [mI5k], and that's not the way I say
it. So I guess you could add me to the list of /mElk/-speakers. I wonder
where I could've picked up something like that?

BTW, I say /bI'kVz/ (something like [bI"k_h6z]).

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