Transcript of “Idea Pronounced as “Ideal” — With an L”
Hey there, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Rose. I’m calling from Edmonton, Kentucky.
When I first got married, my mother-in-law would say something. She would say this word, and I thought it was just her. It was, oh, well, that’s a good ideal. And I thought it was just her saying idea, maybe incorrectly or just with her southern accent. But then I started hearing other people say the same thing. Oh, good ideal. And I just kind of wondered, you know, was that just a slang in the area or exactly where it came from?
And they’re all there in Kentucky near you?
Yep. Yeah. In South Central, pretty rural area of Kentucky.
Yeah, that attracts. That’s actually a fairly common dialect feature and very appropriate to that area. And you’ll hear that in various parts of the United States in the South and Appalachia. And in some of the mid-Atlantic states, these are the parts of New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey. And in other parts of the United States, it’ll manifest as an R instead of an L. And those, as you may know, the L and the R are pronounced in almost the same way in the mouth. And often it has to do with what sound follows that word. And sometimes it has to do with kind of the habituation of the mouth.
There’s a lot of complicated linguistic stuff that we can get into, but I don’t know that anybody would keep their radio on after that.
Okay.
But a common one that you may have heard of before, instead of the L going, the R goes. So the word idea instead of sounding like ideal, as you say, sounds like idea with an R at the end of it. And you’ll hear that very often in the United Kingdom.
So some of what’s happening here is they’re bridging two vowels. Like the mouth wants there to be a consonant between two vowels. So word A ends with a vowel. And the following word, word B, begins with a vowel. And so the mouth just kind of automatically inserts a consonant. And the L and the R are both kind of liquidy consonants. So it puts them in there because they’re not very hard consonants.
So, for example, the word I saw it sometimes sounds like I saw it. S-A-W-L. Because the W and the I kind of are both vowel-like. I saw it. So that’s part of what could be happening. There are a lot of other things there. But usually it just has to be with what is most comfortable for the mouth.
The way that we do our vowels in our certain dialects habituates us. That is, it makes us more likely to pronounce vowels in a certain way and to end our words in a certain way. So I wouldn’t be surprised if you listen more to the speech of your in-laws, Rose, if you’ll hear them do other words with L at the end where you wouldn’t ordinarily hear it.
Well, we appreciate the call anyway, Rose. And you take care of yourself now, right?
Okay.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
You too.
Bye-bye.
How do they talk in your part of the world?
Let us know.
