User:Timmypirater/L-sounds in Swedish

The L-sounds are a set of sounds used in the swedish language in words as lampa, kall and älg. The most common pronounciation in standard swedish is an alveolar lateral approximant, but there is also a retroflex allophone after /r/ in words as pärla and sorl. Historically and dialectally there also exists other l-sounds i swedish, such as thick l (voiced retroflex flap), or voiceless l (voiceless alveolar lateral fricative).

Thick l
A thick l (also called kakuminal l) or retroflex flap (IPA: [ɽ]) is a consonant sound that occurs in north germanic languages. Det skiljer sig till uttalet från det tunna (dentala) svenska l-ljudet and occurs or has occured as an allophone to /l/ or as its own phoneme in large parts of Sweden and Norway, and in the swedish varieties in Finland och Estonia.

Pronounciation and distribution
The thick l i pronounced by the tongue hitting the alveolar ridge in about the same place as the retroflex consonants. In most of traditional dialects with a thick l it is used not only for the written ⟨l⟩ but also for ⟨rd⟩. Thick l for ⟨l⟩ has therefore survived longer than for ⟨rd⟩ in modern speech, where it usually gets replaced with [ɖ]. There are a few words in swedish whose spelling with ⟨l⟩ hint at an older pronounciation with thick l, ex. stel (stiff) from old swedish stirdher, svål osw. svardher, vålnad osw. vardhnadher or i fjol osw. i fjordh, in the south also i fjor.

I dialects that have the sound it has a complementary distrubution with the thin l-sound, as such these dialects have (at least) two l-sounds. The rules for which sound is used where is different throughout the distrubuition area, but thhere are a few rules of thumb that are common in almost the whole area. In most traditionall dialects with thick l the thin (dental) l is used word initiallt and when it is long (written ⟨ll⟩). Words as 'lång' and 'kall' therefore have a thin l, whereas 'älg' and 'hål' have thick l. Related to the thick l are the retroflex sounds, /r/ fusing with /t/, /d/, /n/, /s/ and /l/ as in 'fort', 'gård', 'garn', 'fors' and 'pärla'. I many of the dialects with thick l there also is a corresponding set off retroflex sounds though fusion of thick l and /t/, /d/, /n/, /s/ as in 'gult' 'böld' 'stelna' and 'hals'. Most commonly these sets are realized in the same way so 'gult' and 'surt rhyme. In loanwords the thick l has a variable occurence. An old german loanword like "sal" has thin l in most dialects, while native words with l in the same position after a long vowel would have thick l. In other old loanwords like "bli" the pronounciation is usually thick.

Origin
Much about the origin of the thick l in north germanic lagnuages is debated, both its age and its geographical origin. Linguists as Hans Ronge and Jurji Kuzmenko consider there to have been a difference in quality between two l-sounds during the old norse period. There is support for this in the old icelandic skaldic poetry, where ⟨l⟩ with few exeptions never rhymes with ⟨ll⟩ In Östgötalagen word final consonants are usually written with a single letter, but the treatment of l breaks this rule and is both written with one and two letters. This could mean that the long l was distinct from the short in quality and not quantity (i.e through artikulation and not length) already in the