# л in Bulgarian



## luitzen

I've been dating a Bulgarian girl for several weeks now and I have been having trouble with pronouncing her name. The problem is the letter l/л. When she pronounces it, it sounds to me like the English w as in the English word _word_, but when I try to pronounce her name this way, she says it is wrong.

So I looked it up on Wikipedia and it says that it used to be pronounced like l in the past and that it still is in some dialects. In other dialects it's pronounced as ɫ (dark l, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_l#Dark_L), but when I listen to the samples it clearly sounds like an l to me, though a little different, and I think it's not that hard to produce that sound.

The problem is, it still sounds entirely different from how she pronounces it.

Could anybody explain to me how I should pronounce this sound?


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## Christo Tamarin

The L sound in many languages (Bulgarian, Turkish, Russian) strongly depends on the following sound.
In Bulgarian, if the following sound is E or I, then L is exactly the same as in French or English (except in some dialects).
What is the name?


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## luitzen

The next sound is an a.


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## luitzen

Btw she also has troubles pronouncing Dutch and English words with the 'normal l'. That's why I thought it weird when I read that they have the normal l in Bulgarian.


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## Christo Tamarin

Christo Tamarin said:


> The L sound in many languages (Bulgarian, Turkish, Russian) strongly depends on the following sound.
> In Bulgarian, if the following sound is E or I, then L is exactly the same as in French or English ..


However, if the following sound is an A, then -LA- in Bulgarian is the same as -LA- in Russian or Turkish and different than -LA- in English or French. From the point of view of a Bulgarian, in Bulgarian -LA- and -LE-, the -L- is the same. That's why Bulgarian people may pronounce the French or English -LA- incorrectly.


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## DarkChild

Christo Tamarin said:


> However, if the following sound is an A, then -LA- in Bulgarian is the same as -LA- in Russian or Turkish and different than -LA- in English or French. From the point of view of a Bulgarian, in Bulgarian -*LA- and -LE-, the -L- is the same*. That's why Bulgarian people may pronounce the French or English -LA- incorrectly.


No, that's wrong. La, lo, lu is the same, Le, Li is different.


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## jasio

Christo Tamarin said:


> However, if the following sound is an A, then -LA- in Bulgarian is the same as -LA- in Russian or Turkish and different than -LA- in English or French. From the point of view of a Bulgarian, in Bulgarian -LA- and -LE-, the -L- is the same. That's why Bulgarian people may pronounce the French or English -LA- incorrectly.





DarkChild said:


> No, that's wrong. La, lo, lu is the same, Le, Li is different.



Do I understand correctly that although the "l" sounds in both situations are actually different ("л" vs. "ль"?), they are percieved by Bulgarians as variants of the same phoneme with only slightly modified pronunciation, in a consistent way, because of the following vowel?

What about "ля", such as in Russian "лягушка"?


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## DarkChild

^^

Yes, they are different.

Before а, ъ, о, у it is a dark hard L

Before е, и it is a softer L same as in Spanish, Italian

And before ю, я, ь it is palatalized Ль

Now to answer the OP's question, there is a very massive tendency in modern language in shifting the first kind of L (the dark L) to W (akin to the Polish L with a line through it). So, your girlfriend pronounces it that way. Most likely in a few decades this will be the norm.

This phenomenon should not be confused with the dialectical substitution of the 2nd L (e, i) with the first kind (dark L or W) observed in Western dialects, especially Shopski region. This is highly dialectical and looked down upon.

So, in conclusion, the dark L is undergoing a transition which is not reflected in language books yet but it's very much present. The other two kinds of L stay the same.


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## jasio

Thanks.



DarkChild said:


> Now to answer the OP's question, there is a very massive tendency in modern language in shifting the first kind of L (the dark L) to W (akin to the Polish L with a line through it). So, your girlfriend pronounces it that way. Most likely in a few decades this will be the norm.



Beware of the next stage though, as this "w" tends now to disappear in Polish, especially in a careless pronunciation. As a result "dworzec główny" ('main station') is pronunced like 'dworzec gówny' ('shitty station').  

But in Bulgarian it will probably take another century, so no worries for now.


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## dreamlike

jasio said:


> Thanks.
> Beware of the next stage though, as this "w" tends now to disappear in Polish, especially in a careless pronunciation. As a result "dworzec główny" ('main station') is pronunced like 'dworzec gówny' ('shitty station').


I'm not aware of such a process taking place. Is this really rampant where you live? Could it be due to the fact that in Warsaw you have a diversity of people who come from different parts of Poland -- among them quite a few people from rural areas, whose speech indeed tends to be quite sloppy?


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## jasio

dreamlike said:


> I'm not aware of such a process taking place. Is this really rampant where you live? Could it be due to the fact that in Warsaw you have a diversity of people who come from different parts of Poland -- among them quite a few people from rural areas, whose speech indeed tends to be quite sloppy?



Perhaps not rampant, but I hear it often enough to not forget it.  I have even heard a professor (ok... from Siedlce, but still a professor) speaking this way.


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## luitzen

DarkChild said:


> Now to answer the OP's question, there is a very massive tendency in modern language in shifting the first kind of L (the dark L) to W (akin to the Polish L with a line through it). So, your girlfriend pronounces it that way. Most likely in a few decades this will be the norm.


Thank you, this is somewhat helpful. As I understand it, I should pronounce л in ла as somewhat between dark hard l and the English w. Even though there's no dark hard l in Dutch, it doesn't sound too hard to pronounce.

Is it true then that Bulgarian doesn't have a 'normal' l as in Dutch or English? I've noticed that she has trouble pronouncing simple words as _als_.


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## DarkChild

luitzen said:


> Thank you, this is somewhat helpful. As I understand it, I should pronounce л in ла as somewhat between dark hard l and the English w. Even though there's no dark hard l in Dutch, it doesn't sound too hard to pronounce.
> 
> Is it true then that Bulgarian doesn't have a 'normal' l as in Dutch or English? I've noticed that she has trouble pronouncing simple words as _als_.



So, the right way to pronounce it is with your tongue touching the back of your upper front teeth. Many people have a speech defect and use their lower lip to do that and it comes out as W. And this speech defect is becoming the norm.

I don't know what a normal L is to you  To me all our L's are normal lol and in English it varies by dialect. If it's the same as in German, then that's the same as our L before "e" and "i". Since that doesn't occur in front of any other vowel or consonant, it's difficult to pronounce it in other languages in those situations. Not that it's impossible but it takes effort and habit, really.


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