single word requests - “Non-rhotic” is to R-droppers as “non-?????” is to L-droppers


Certain speakers of English have a tendency to “drop” L’s that occur after a vowel but before another consonant, as in balm, calm, golf, gulf, palm, wolf, and many more.


Often these aren’t completely dropped, but instead change the preceding vowel a little bit. So instead of wolf, they have woof; instead of palm they have pom or pawm; instead of golf, they have gawf.


People who drop their R’s in a similar position are said to have a non-rhotic pronunciation there, or to speak a non-rhotic dialect. What then is the corresponding term for someone who routinely drops their L’s, so “a non-????? speaker”? Lambdacism and lallation seem like dead ends.


This isn’t a new thing either, considering the historical L’s no longer heard in words like could and stalk. Whether it’s growing, I’m not sure, but perhaps so.



Answer



It would appear that the word you’re looking for is L-vocalization, which, to quote the wikipedia page on the topic, “is a process by which an [l] sound is replaced by a vowel or semivowel sound”, which appears to be what is being described here, specifically with regards to English L-vocalization — where “an /l/ sound occurring at the end of a word or before a consonant is replaced with the semivowel [w]”, such as the palm/pawm issue (the example given in the article is of milk [mIwk]).


I don’t think there is a term for someone who does this in the non-??? speaker fashion, although L-vocalizer could be a valid construction.


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