This is in response to an email received. A very long blog entry! It discusses subtleties in the pronunciation of the L sound.

Video Text:

I recently received an email asking to explain the difference between the light and the dark L sound. This person said, "This difference is much more obvious to a Turkish speaker, for whom the light L and the dark L are separate sounds than to an English speaker, for whom they are variations on a single sound. I don't know if this is true because I am not a native speaker. It seems to be that the light L has a different tongue position than the dark L." This is exactly right, actually. In English it's all written, all L sounds are written with the same IPA symbol. So, we don't really teach a light L and a dark L, but in practice that is certainly how it is, depending on the position in the word.

Now, there are exceptions of course, to everything in English, but: the light L would be at the beginning of a word or a syllable, or whenever it is linked to another consonant, like, for example, in the word 'flash.' Ff ll are linked together, those two consonant sounds, so that would be a light L. Dark L then would be, an L that comes at the end of a syllable or a word.

Now. I've said the word light L and dark L several times, what am I talking about? The light L would be what was described in the video that I already did for the sound ll. And that is, when the tongue comes up and touches the roof of the mouth just behind the top teeth in the front -- here. Ll, ll, ll. The dark L finishes with that sound, but has a different sound that precedes it. And that sound is a little mysterious, but let's dig into it.

I want to use as an example the word 'feel.' Fff-eeee-uuhh-ll. Now, as you noticed, there was a sound uuhh before the tongue came up to finish off the L. Now what exactly is that sound? It's not written in IPA. It's similar in sound to the schwa, but the tongue does a lot more work than in the schwa where it's all just very neutral. In this particular sound, the tongue kind of fattens up in the middle. To me it's similar, actually, to when I cough. The tongue comes up out of the throat a little bit, and it fattens and thickens in the back and in the center. So the sides, if the tongue was like this on the schwa, it comes more like this in the sound before the L in the dark L. Uuhh, uuhh. And the tongue is not, the tip of the tongue is not touching anything. It does come up then, to finish the L sound by touching the roof of the mouth. Uuhh-ll, uuhh-ll. But I also want to point out that it is acceptable, many people actually do pronounce this dark L without ever bringing the tip of the tongue up. In other words, they don't actually finish the dark sound. Feel, they might finish it fee-uuhh, in which the tongue doesn't come up, the tongue is staying in the middle of the mouth with the thickened back and middle.

Let's go over some sample words. Words with the light L: let. As you can tell, of course, there was no vowel sound before that. Last, live, land, like, flash, flash. Some more complicated words where it's not the beginning sound, but rather the beginning of a syllable within the word itself: conflict, replace, reliable, relationship. Some examples of the dark L: Now in some of the cases, like the word feel, feel, I feel that that vowel sound that comes before the dark L is very obvious. It's longer. In some words, it's not so long, but it is still that different coloring. Tell, fall, stole, forceful, false, title. I am going to go and repeat those words, and this time I am not actually going to bring the tongue to the roof of the mouth to finish the sound, so the sound will end with that uuhh sound. Tell, fall, stole, forceful, false, title.

As you are learning ESL, as you are learning the accent, I would recommend that you do go ahead and finish off those dark L's by bringing the tongue up and touching the roof of the mouth, although you may notice that some native speakers do not do that.

This blog entry has an appendix...a little bit more work on the dark L when comparing 'word' with 'world'.