In medieval Brazilian Portuguese the L at the end of words was a Dark L but over time it was vocalized to W "BraziW" in Portugal this L is still preserved.
You never fail to completely blow my mind with these lessons! Brilliant explanation. I thought I knew everything about the light/dark distinction, but nope, I've definitely learned a lot of new stuff. If you make a video about the TH sound, would you consider briefly mentioning the urban/vernacular pronunciation of that sound? English teachers usually teach it as a dental fricative, (which is the correct realization) but I've actually encountered a couple of native speakers who use more of a dental stop instead of the usual TH. They're usually of African American or Latino descent (though it can be anyone really), and these speakers were born and raised in the States. It's almost a must to pronounce your TH's this way if you're a rapper. And by "dental stop" I don't mean a T or a D sound (since those are alveolar) but with the tongue flicking against the front teeth and having a stop-like quality, as opposed to fricative.
Yes, it's like a softer form of T or D, often (but not always) made from full contact with the teeth, and is what I would refer to as a "lazy" or "more informal" TH sound. For some speakers (including many white Southerners), it's just the way they speak, which is often rooted in historical and cultural reasons. I've noticed that I sometimes use it myself when speaking quickly or extra informally (or in my Southern accent lol). Note that there's actually a special connection rule between n/t/d and the TH sounds where we often make a modification to the position of the n/t/d by laying it flat on the teeth and pulling off without physically creating a "th" at all. This change in position creates the illusion of a TH sound for a native speaker's brain and we don't really notice a difference (at least I never did).
@@NativeEnglishHacks Awesome! Thank you for the additional info. Wow. I wish more people were this knowledgeable about this stuff as you are :-) Can't wait for the next video in the consonant series and hopefully you're in a good place. ❤️
@@laracroftvideos great observation!! By looking at your comments seems like you are really diving deep in the sounds. I also do this a lot. How are you by the way?
@@laracroftvideos Also I wanted to ask you something. When Josh in one of his amazing videos was telling us about the difference in 'ir' and 'Ir' sounds for example - he pronounced words like 'clear', 'fear' with 'first vowel sound + r' and also with 'second vowel sound + r', were you able to hear the difference? Honestly I wasn't able to distinguish the sounds, even though same words were pronounced with different vowels.
@@siddhantkapoor8079 Hey! Thank you for the nice comments and for reading my essays haha. I thought it was just Josh I'm torturing. I'm good, thank you for asking! 🙂 And to answer your question -- funny you're asking me that because R-colored vowels were a major pain in the butt for me to grasp before Josh covered them, and after interrogating a bunch of other teachers I came to the conclusion that most textbooks and dictionaries are completely rubbish at explaining them. You specifically asked me about /ɪ/ (as in hit) and /i/ (as in see), but the same applies to any other lax vowel sound (for example 'ʊ' as in look VS. 'u' as in Luke) -- what happens is that whenever lax vowels (ɛ, ɪ, ʊ) appear before an "r," they're no longer easily distinguishable from their tense counterparts (eɪ, i, u) -- meaning the lax/tense contrast is lost and rather than sounding like one or the other, the sound you're hearing is actually something BETWEEN /ɪ/ and /i/ (in words like fear, here, clear)... So, did I hear the /ɪ/ sound when Josh demonstrated it? *No* AND I believe neither can he haha. Both of his examples sounded like a slightly more relaxed 'ee' sound. My ears might be biased though because that's how I say it lol. My native language does have an /ɪ/ though, so I should be able to hear it! I've gotten very conflicting answers when asking native speakers about R-colored vowels. Some speakers believe they only use /i/ before "r" and don't use /ɪ/ at all; others believe they use more of an /ɪ/ sound; some will tell you that the sound is like /i/ but not as tense as in "see", and I've also been told by one native speaker in particular that she uses both /ɪ/ AND /i/ depending on the word. I believe that it is a hard topic to cover because I think the vowel sound that is used before "r" may vary depending on the dialect (i.e. West coast vs. East coast) and there's a lot of disagreement in terms of how to transcribe these R-colored vowels... Sorry for such a lengthy reply, but I wanted to share all my findings! 🙂
This one was the easiest English sound for to master. In my first language the L sound is dental-alveolar, but I couldn't pronounce it right until graduation so every maybe 100th person I met told me there's something off about my L sound; others couldn't tell the difference even when I clearly demostrated my wrong L sound to them, so it was hard even for me to tell if my L is right or wrong (speaking about how good natives are to rely on in this regard). After all I watched a video explaining the dental L, so I picked it up and my L started to sound very clear, although it was extremely difficult for me to get used to that, cause my mouth posture just wasn't ready for a dental sound among all the others. Only after I started studying English phonetics I came across the fact that my first language's L is dental-alveolar (as any other consonant, ironically), but also then I realized that the L sound I pronounced most of my life in Russian was the American "Dark L" sound, and practically no one could ever tell any difference. Phonetics is a subtle thing
Good idea, but unfortunately, I see a few problems with this. 1) not all learners readily know what "pre" and "post" mean. 2) This doesn't sufficiently distinguish the fact that there are conceptually two types of L's, making things more difficult in my opinion. 3) Because the Half-L behaves almost exactly like a vowel and is physically formed like a vowel, I like to add "vowel" and "consonant" as further distinction between dark and light, respectively. But using "pre-vowel" and "post-vowel" would muddy this and make things more confusing/complicated. This is just my opinion on the matter.
As an English speaker, I never hear the difference, because there is not one in sound but in length. The half-L is just the vowel you need to actuate the L, which is an accent to the vowel. It is factually identical to how Y, W, and R work. to make the "yuh" sound, you actually make the "ee" sound first, then accent it on exectution to make the "wuh" sound, you actually make the "oo" sound first, then accent it on exectution to make the english "ruh", you actually make the stressed schwa (Wedge/Caret), the accent it on execution and finally to make the "Luh" sound, you make the so called "half-L" then accent it at the end. the word Battle, and all other words with -le at the end, make a longer vowel sound, then when used at the front of a word, like Lake. if you don't believe me, try to drag out any of these letters, you can't remove the vowel from the beginning you just can say it faster.
In the word FEEL I can hear the contrast between the long E and the dark L "uh" but in the word FILL, the dark L seems to merge with the short i and create a tighter, faster dark L, is the dark L in both words the same? sorry for the long question! thanks in advance!
In British English: 1. The Pre-vowel L is always a Light L. (Alveolar-tapping.) 2. The Post-vowel L is always a Dark L. (A schwa followed by a non-alveolar-tapping Dark L. Always an unstressed syllable.)
The full-L and the half-L are actually part of the complete range of one L sound. With that in mind, the tip of the tongue can be anywhere along the path from half-L to full-L and still sound like a half-L as long as you don't touch (which is when it becomes the full-L)
I think everyone is making a big deal out of light/dark L. To me it’s exactly the same sound. The difference comes from the mouth and tongue trying to smooth things over. The dark L is exactly the same as the light L in ‘luh’ or ‘le’, except your tongue makes the gesture to pronounce the syllable but stops short of actually following through to pronounce it. The ‘uh’ or short ‘e’ is the vowel sound you’d make with a neutral vocal tract - think minimal vocal tract size and movement. The dark L just the consequence of your tongue and mouth making the L alveolar gesture and then smoothing it to the neutral position.
If the next word begins with a vowel, the dark L of the previous word becomes a light L because it has actual vowel to smooth to. It follows my explanation above.
Some of what you say is very accurate and insightful, but I can assure you that there's a difference between them, even if it might largely be one of quality. You are correct with the vowel linking, though this is actually completely optional, as I discuss in the 4 big "exceptions" to the 4 general rules of linking. And perhaps it was a typo, but UH is not the "short e", that's EH as in "bed" :)
@@NativeEnglishHacksI meant the (two distinct) vowel sounds, ‘uh’ and ‘short e’/‘eh’ are relatively neutral or relaxed configurations of the vocal tract. That’s why when long vowel sounds are contracted, deemphasized, or slurred over, they wind up being one of these sounds.
@@NativeEnglishHacksMy point is that many variations of sounds in English, or any language for that matter arise because of the smoothing or blending of motor movements. There may just be one vocal tract configuration for a consonant or a vowel sound. But it is modified by vocal tract configurations of surrounding syllables, because when speaking quickly and fluently you automatically blend them together. It’s like dancing. You don’t just concatenate the steps. You blend and transition through them smoothly.
@@NativeEnglishHacksMy point is that many variations of sounds in English, or any language for that matter arise because of the smoothing or blending of motor movements. There may just be one vocal tract configuration for a consonant or a vowel sound. But it is modified by vocal tract configurations of surrounding syllables, because when speaking quickly and fluently you automatically blend them together. It’s like dancing. You don’t just concatenate the steps. You blend and transition through them smoothly.
my initial L sounds ultra light, Spanish is my first language, in words like LA LA LAND, the L sounds thicker and sort of produced in the back of the mouth, is this what's happening? thanks for the great videos!
The English L (Full-L) is flatter and has tension in the back, which is probably what you're hearing as "thicker". For the Half-L, the back takes over completely, making it sound even thicker. You can pretty much always use the Half-L because we often break the rule for the Full-L, but by default words like "la" and "land" are supposed to use the Full-L, meaning the front of the tongue touches the top of your mouth
@@NativeEnglishHacks Using your hands to explain the tongue motion is such as amazing visual help! if I pull the back of the tongue back would this help with the dark L? your content is always groung-breaking!
It's refreshing and intuitive to think of the Dark L sound as a vowel sound. Thank you for your excellent explanation!
The best explanation ever, thanks : ))
In medieval Brazilian Portuguese the L at the end of words was a Dark L but over time it was vocalized to W "BraziW" in Portugal this L is still preserved.
Cool 🙂
How have I just discovered your channel now? Your explanations are so fresh and intuitive. Mind blowing.
You are the only one who points out the location of half L in the vowel chart as at 2:35 among all teachers I've seen on UA-cam.
Woooow, literally an eye opener! Thank you Josh!!
I'm so glad I found your channel
Me, too! ☺ Glad to help
Hey Josh ... Nice to see you again.
Been a crazy couple of weeks! Sorry I couldn't get this one up sooner. Already have the next one in the works :)
Another masterpiece!
Thanks 🙂 I know I haven't responded to your other comments yet, but I will soon. Probably before today's live stream. Was super busy yesterday
Great!
You never fail to completely blow my mind with these lessons! Brilliant explanation. I thought I knew everything about the light/dark distinction, but nope, I've definitely learned a lot of new stuff. If you make a video about the TH sound, would you consider briefly mentioning the urban/vernacular pronunciation of that sound? English teachers usually teach it as a dental fricative, (which is the correct realization) but I've actually encountered a couple of native speakers who use more of a dental stop instead of the usual TH. They're usually of African American or Latino descent (though it can be anyone really), and these speakers were born and raised in the States. It's almost a must to pronounce your TH's this way if you're a rapper. And by "dental stop" I don't mean a T or a D sound (since those are alveolar) but with the tongue flicking against the front teeth and having a stop-like quality, as opposed to fricative.
Yes, it's like a softer form of T or D, often (but not always) made from full contact with the teeth, and is what I would refer to as a "lazy" or "more informal" TH sound. For some speakers (including many white Southerners), it's just the way they speak, which is often rooted in historical and cultural reasons. I've noticed that I sometimes use it myself when speaking quickly or extra informally (or in my Southern accent lol).
Note that there's actually a special connection rule between n/t/d and the TH sounds where we often make a modification to the position of the n/t/d by laying it flat on the teeth and pulling off without physically creating a "th" at all. This change in position creates the illusion of a TH sound for a native speaker's brain and we don't really notice a difference (at least I never did).
@@NativeEnglishHacks Awesome! Thank you for the additional info. Wow. I wish more people were this knowledgeable about this stuff as you are :-) Can't wait for the next video in the consonant series and hopefully you're in a good place. ❤️
@@laracroftvideos great observation!! By looking at your comments seems like you are really diving deep in the sounds. I also do this a lot. How are you by the way?
@@laracroftvideos Also I wanted to ask you something. When Josh in one of his amazing videos was telling us about the difference in 'ir' and 'Ir' sounds for example - he pronounced words like 'clear', 'fear' with 'first vowel sound + r' and also with 'second vowel sound + r', were you able to hear the difference? Honestly I wasn't able to distinguish the sounds, even though same words were pronounced with different vowels.
@@siddhantkapoor8079 Hey! Thank you for the nice comments and for reading my essays haha. I thought it was just Josh I'm torturing. I'm good, thank you for asking! 🙂 And to answer your question -- funny you're asking me that because R-colored vowels were a major pain in the butt for me to grasp before Josh covered them, and after interrogating a bunch of other teachers I came to the conclusion that most textbooks and dictionaries are completely rubbish at explaining them. You specifically asked me about /ɪ/ (as in hit) and /i/ (as in see), but the same applies to any other lax vowel sound (for example 'ʊ' as in look VS. 'u' as in Luke) -- what happens is that whenever lax vowels (ɛ, ɪ, ʊ) appear before an "r," they're no longer easily distinguishable from their tense counterparts (eɪ, i, u) -- meaning the lax/tense contrast is lost and rather than sounding like one or the other, the sound you're hearing is actually something BETWEEN /ɪ/ and /i/ (in words like fear, here, clear)... So, did I hear the /ɪ/ sound when Josh demonstrated it? *No* AND I believe neither can he haha. Both of his examples sounded like a slightly more relaxed 'ee' sound. My ears might be biased though because that's how I say it lol. My native language does have an /ɪ/ though, so I should be able to hear it! I've gotten very conflicting answers when asking native speakers about R-colored vowels. Some speakers believe they only use /i/ before "r" and don't use /ɪ/ at all; others believe they use more of an /ɪ/ sound; some will tell you that the sound is like /i/ but not as tense as in "see", and I've also been told by one native speaker in particular that she uses both /ɪ/ AND /i/ depending on the word. I believe that it is a hard topic to cover because I think the vowel sound that is used before "r" may vary depending on the dialect (i.e. West coast vs. East coast) and there's a lot of disagreement in terms of how to transcribe these R-colored vowels... Sorry for such a lengthy reply, but I wanted to share all my findings! 🙂
This one was the easiest English sound for to master. In my first language the L sound is dental-alveolar, but I couldn't pronounce it right until graduation so every maybe 100th person I met told me there's something off about my L sound; others couldn't tell the difference even when I clearly demostrated my wrong L sound to them, so it was hard even for me to tell if my L is right or wrong (speaking about how good natives are to rely on in this regard). After all I watched a video explaining the dental L, so I picked it up and my L started to sound very clear, although it was extremely difficult for me to get used to that, cause my mouth posture just wasn't ready for a dental sound among all the others. Only after I started studying English phonetics I came across the fact that my first language's L is dental-alveolar (as any other consonant, ironically), but also then I realized that the L sound I pronounced most of my life in Russian was the American "Dark L" sound, and practically no one could ever tell any difference. Phonetics is a subtle thing
Thank you.
Josh, I've come up with the best nomenclature:
1. Pre-vowel L = Light L, Full L;
2. Post-vowel L = Dark L, Half L.
Good idea, but unfortunately, I see a few problems with this. 1) not all learners readily know what "pre" and "post" mean. 2) This doesn't sufficiently distinguish the fact that there are conceptually two types of L's, making things more difficult in my opinion. 3) Because the Half-L behaves almost exactly like a vowel and is physically formed like a vowel, I like to add "vowel" and "consonant" as further distinction between dark and light, respectively. But using "pre-vowel" and "post-vowel" would muddy this and make things more confusing/complicated.
This is just my opinion on the matter.
Also, please don't post the same comment multiple times. They will simply be removed. Thank you
Great Video!! in the word "capability" , is it a half L ? thanks
As an English speaker, I never hear the difference, because there is not one in sound but in length. The half-L is just the vowel you need to actuate the L, which is an accent to the vowel. It is factually identical to how Y, W, and R work.
to make the "yuh" sound, you actually make the "ee" sound first, then accent it on exectution
to make the "wuh" sound, you actually make the "oo" sound first, then accent it on exectution
to make the english "ruh", you actually make the stressed schwa (Wedge/Caret), the accent it on execution
and finally to make the "Luh" sound, you make the so called "half-L" then accent it at the end.
the word Battle, and all other words with -le at the end, make a longer vowel sound, then when used at the front of a word, like Lake.
if you don't believe me, try to drag out any of these letters, you can't remove the vowel from the beginning you just can say it faster.
In the word FEEL I can hear the contrast between the long E and the dark L "uh" but in the word FILL, the dark L seems to merge with the short i and create a tighter, faster dark L, is the dark L in both words the same? sorry for the long question! thanks in advance!
Yes. The slight difference is in the transition from two different starting points
In British English:
1. The Pre-vowel L is always a Light L. (Alveolar-tapping.)
2. The Post-vowel L is always a Dark L. (A schwa followed by a non-alveolar-tapping Dark L. Always an unstressed syllable.)
Awesome
can you use the half l for words that start with l like 'like??
ua-cam.com/video/0G5VZc-ONjM/v-deo.html
When making a Half L, can you lift the tip of the tongue a bit (not touching anything) and still sound like a native?
The full-L and the half-L are actually part of the complete range of one L sound. With that in mind, the tip of the tongue can be anywhere along the path from half-L to full-L and still sound like a half-L as long as you don't touch (which is when it becomes the full-L)
@@NativeEnglishHacks The tip of the tongue can be anywhere another great tip! Thanks!!
I think everyone is making a big deal out of light/dark L. To me it’s exactly the same sound. The difference comes from the mouth and tongue trying to smooth things over. The dark L is exactly the same as the light L in ‘luh’ or ‘le’, except your tongue makes the gesture to pronounce the syllable but stops short of actually following through to pronounce it. The ‘uh’ or short ‘e’ is the vowel sound you’d make with a neutral vocal tract - think minimal vocal tract size and movement. The dark L just the consequence of your tongue and mouth making the L alveolar gesture and then smoothing it to the neutral position.
If the next word begins with a vowel, the dark L of the previous word becomes a light L because it has actual vowel to smooth to. It follows my explanation above.
Some of what you say is very accurate and insightful, but I can assure you that there's a difference between them, even if it might largely be one of quality. You are correct with the vowel linking, though this is actually completely optional, as I discuss in the 4 big "exceptions" to the 4 general rules of linking.
And perhaps it was a typo, but UH is not the "short e", that's EH as in "bed" :)
@@NativeEnglishHacksI meant the (two distinct) vowel sounds, ‘uh’ and ‘short e’/‘eh’ are relatively neutral or relaxed configurations of the vocal tract. That’s why when long vowel sounds are contracted, deemphasized, or slurred over, they wind up being one of these sounds.
@@NativeEnglishHacksMy point is that many variations of sounds in English, or any language for that matter arise because of the smoothing or blending of motor movements. There may just be one vocal tract configuration for a consonant or a vowel sound. But it is modified by vocal tract configurations of surrounding syllables, because when speaking quickly and fluently you automatically blend them together. It’s like dancing. You don’t just concatenate the steps. You blend and transition through them smoothly.
@@NativeEnglishHacksMy point is that many variations of sounds in English, or any language for that matter arise because of the smoothing or blending of motor movements. There may just be one vocal tract configuration for a consonant or a vowel sound. But it is modified by vocal tract configurations of surrounding syllables, because when speaking quickly and fluently you automatically blend them together. It’s like dancing. You don’t just concatenate the steps. You blend and transition through them smoothly.
my initial L sounds ultra light, Spanish is my first language, in words like LA LA LAND, the L sounds thicker and sort of produced in the back of the mouth, is this what's happening? thanks for the great videos!
The English L (Full-L) is flatter and has tension in the back, which is probably what you're hearing as "thicker". For the Half-L, the back takes over completely, making it sound even thicker. You can pretty much always use the Half-L because we often break the rule for the Full-L, but by default words like "la" and "land" are supposed to use the Full-L, meaning the front of the tongue touches the top of your mouth
@@NativeEnglishHacks Using your hands to explain the tongue motion is such as amazing visual help! if I pull the back of the tongue back would this help with the dark L? your content is always groung-breaking!
It might help. But you don't want the back of the tongue to go into the throat too much, so be careful
@@NativeEnglishHacks thanks!
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