Lest talk calmly about all these Ls

Roughly from 1600-1725 (most likely even predates that) -al /aɫ/ and -ol /ɔɫ/ underwent changes aka "mutations." 

• Before -f & -v,  L /ɫ/ becomes 'silent' (deleted). Words half and calf are now pronounced as -af /af/ and salve and halve are -av /av/. -olv /ɔɫv/ is exempt, so solve retains /ɫ/. -olf /ɔɫf/ is not always exempt, as the traditional pronunciation of golf was /gɔf/.

• Before m becomes /ɑ:/ and /o:/ as in alms, balm, calm, Holmes and palm.

• Before k, a *coronal consonant or word final -al and -ol were diphthongized to /ɔuɫ/ and /ouɫ/ as in all,  bald, colt, false, folk, malt, roll, sold, talk, and Walsh. 

• *Coronals are consonants articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue (s, z, θ, ð (TH), n, t, d to name a few).

• BUT THEN: the combination before -k resulted in a lose of /ɫ/ in most accents. Affecting words like caulk, folk and talk. Words acquired after this change, such as talc, were not affected. Falcon was also historically affected, but in some modern dialects (Most notably American English) it has reacquired the /ɫ/due to spelling.

The re-addition of /ɫ/ into American speech has not stopped with falcon. Words such as calm, (palm, balm etc) also have begun (due to spelling) to be pronounced with L again.

To note, there are still dialects within North American English that do still retain the traditional pronunciation without the L.

Is there are a correlation between this re-addition and the phenomenon of intrusive-l in North American English? More research into this area needs to be done before that answer can be given.

-Нафаня-

Where are all these -ENs coming from???

Past Participles -- (-en)

Old English
Storng verbs:
Tense being changed by quality of the vowel.
stelan - Infinitive (to steal)
ic stele - present 1st sing (I steal)
ic stæl - past 1st sing (I stole)
stelende - present participle (stealing)
(ge)stolen - past participle (stolen)

Weak verbs:
Idicate tense by adding an ending
hælan - infinitive (to heal)
ic hæle - present 1st person sing (i heal)
ic hælde - past 1st person sing (i healed)
hælende - present participle (healing)
hæled - past participle (healed)

Modern English
In my opinion, I think that in various dialects of English (esp in North American English) the people are reanylizing the -en suffix onto verbs that originally had not had it.
Verbs such as buy -->boughten, and bring---> broughten are two I can 100% confirm that people say in certain dialects.
More research and looking into this will have to be done but It will be interesting to see if any other verbs are doing this.

-Нафаня-

P.S. Yes there is a trend in other dialects to remove the participle and replace it with the past tense from. (this trend the more common of the two)
I have ridden/I have rode

Begging for bags

For about 3 months I have been living up here in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area. Since being here I have come to greatly appreciate my own variant of English (Not to say that how people speak up here is anywhere near bad).

When I first started catering (no longer cater, now I am in payroll), I was asked by one of my co-workers "do we have another beg (what I heard)." For a moment I was unsure of what they wanted but then figured it out. I have  known for years that here in the upper Midwest it is common to raise the vowel (/æ/ i.e. the vowel in cat) to where it sound similar to the vowel in eight (/e/). Thus rendering bag as what others who don't have this shift as beg.
The vowel does not have to be /e/ (ei-) but it will be somewhere between /æ/ and /e/ (cat and eight). This raising happens before voiced velar sounds (/g/ e.i. g and /ŋ/ e.i. ng). 


Now whenever I say the verb 'beg' I cannot help but to think I mean bag... 

-Нафаня-