Pronunciation of l before k

Peter Freund pfreund at MUM.EDU
Thu Jul 6 17:13:32 UTC 2000


Dear list members:

For the Sanskrit teachers amongst you, another somewhat bizarre way that
Americans mispronounce Sanskrit has recently come to my attention.
Perhaps everyone knows this, but I've never heard it discussed before.

There are four semivowels in Sanskrit, ya, ra, la, and va, representing
half-contact for the palatal, retroflex (arguable, of course), dental, and
labial points of contact.  In English, there is apparently a fifth
semivowel, an l which is pronounced with the glottis at the back of the
throat.  This occurs whenever l is followed by k, as in the common word
"milk".  The l in milk is not a dental--as an Estonian friend of
mine--quite fluent in English-- discovered to his chagrin when he could
not make his desire for "milk" understood to a waiter because he was
mispronouncing the guttural l!

In Sanskrit, an l before a k occurs in words like Yajnavalkya, words which
are inevitably mispronounced by Americans who unconsciously substitute
their guttural l for the proper dental l.

Sincerely,

Peter Freund





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