# When did BCS shift from L to O (bil > bio)?



## bragpipes

BCS is one of the few cases in Slavic where the past tense in sg. 1 masculine shifted from L to O.  

hteo, htela, htelo, hteli - wanted
želeo - wished
bio - was 
radio - worked
pevao - sang

This is not just for verbs, but some nouns show this as well: pakao (hell) đavao (devil), čitaonica (reading room) and so on.

When did this happen?  Did it happen in stages?  Was there an intermediate stage where it was pronounced as "w" instead of an additional vowel?

Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian have "dał," "даў" and "дав" but they are closer to "daw" than "da-o."

Are there other Slavic languages that have or have had similar trends (L > W, L > O or L > O)  or did writing, education, media, radio, TV, etc. slow down the evolution/deviation of language from the official standard and phased out local "inconsistencies"?


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## ahvalj

In Russian, this shift of the hard _l_ into a _w_-like sound in any position occurs in the speech of some individuals: I have a colleague, who pronounces _l_ as _w_ (and _r_ as a French-type _r_), and this was inherited by her children. The late patriarch Alexius II (Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) spoke this way as well. Such an articulation is regarded as an undesirable deviation and is usually corrected in kindergartens. Overall, the shift of the hard _l_ into _w_ is pretty widespread in the world languages and occurred e. g. in Western Romance (_alterum > autre, outro, otro_), in Dutch (_gold>goud, Walther>Wouter_) and in English (_walk>[wawk]>[wok]_).


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## Panceltic

The shift -l > -o occurs only in a part of BCS dialects. In Kajkavian, it remains -l [bil, peval], whereas in Dalmatia it is usually -a [bija, piva (<pivao), da (< dao < dal)]

In Slovenian, we have the same feature as mentioned for Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian: The masculine is pronounced with a [w] sound, but the orthography retains the -l. So: bil ['biw], želel ['žɛləw], mislil ['misliw], delal ['delaw]

It works for other words too: volk [vɔwk], vol [vɔw], pekel ['pəkəw/pə'kəw] (=hell), pekel (je) ['pekəw] (=he baked)

The combinations [aw], [iw], [əw] tend to be reduced even further to /u/ in colloquial language, so we have ['pəku/pə'ku] for pekel, ['peku] for pekel (je), ['mislu] for mislil, ['delu] for delal etc.

Did writing, education, media ... slow down the evolution? It certainly did. Many words are hypercorrected and pronounced with [l] where a [w] is expected, e.g. prebivalci [prebi'vawtsi ~ prebi'valtsi]. Some older people still pronounce [bil, mislil, delal] etc. when reading texts out loud - but this is rapidly dying out.


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## OBrasilo

- Panceltic: Here in the Littoral (Koper to be precide), I've noticed a tendency that yes, [iw] and [ǝw] are reduced to [ u ], but [aw] stays. Also, [ǝ] becomes [ɛ], so we get [pɛkɛw] ~ [pɛku] for pekel, [pɛku] for pekel (je), [mislu] for mislil, and [dɛlaw] for delal, though I've heard completely non-reduced pronouncation too (but still with [ǝ] becoming [ɛ] - in fact, the three e's and [ǝ] becoming [ɛ] seems to be typical of the Littoralese dialects).


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## Panceltic

Oh interesting, I wasn't aware of that 

Also, in Gorenjska, a majority of dialects has the l > w (or even v) shift before a/o/u (in all words). So for example: šla ['šwa~'šva], videla ['vidwa~'vidva], plačala [pwa'čawa~pva'čava] etc.

Speaking like this is generally deemed not acceptable outside your own home, so occasions when you can actually hear this spoken are very few and far between.


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## francisgranada

bragpipes said:


> ... Are there other Slavic languages that have or have had similar trends (L > W, L > O or L > O) ...


The L>W phenomenon is present also in some Slovak and, as far as I know, in some Moravian dialects.


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## bragpipes

Wow.  This phenomenon is more widespread than I had thought. 

Is there debate in Slovene on the topic of orthographic reform?  Meaning, writing a W instead of L, or something like Ł to signify the altered pronunciation while keeping it as L for historical reasons?  (French does this with ô - hôtel from h*os*tel)  Or is the debate more concerned with "correcting" the pronunciation?


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## Panceltic

There have been efforts to introduce spellings like bravec (bralec, reader), igravec (igralec, actor), prodajavec (prodajalec, seller). I think this was even the official orthography for a decade or so in the 1960s or 70s. It didn't catch on, and it was later changed back. As regards pronunciation, it has been, sadly, on an 'anything goes' base recently ... Especially on commercial TV and radio stations, but even the national broadcasting company RTV Slovenija, once a fortress of orthoepy, seems to lower the standards somewhat.


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## francisgranada

In case of Slovak (and Czech) it is a regional phenomenon, not a general tendency, so the standard spelling (L) is ok. The question is, if this is an independent local phenomenon or it's rather due to some Polish influence or to the Western Slavic language continuum.  Interestingly, this phenomenon is absent in most of the Eastern Slovak dialects, even though they share many phonetic and lexical features with Polish.

A question _a propos_: Is this L>W (Ł) shift present in all the Polish speaking area, or there are still regions where the original pronunciation (L) survives?


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## Sobakus

In Bulgarian the vocalisation of hard L regardless of position (so even between vowels) is prevalent among younger speakers.


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## bragpipes

@Panceltic - Would the use of v in bravec/igravec mean v?  I read that Slovene v is /ʋ/, a labiodental approximant, sort of between v and w.    But from samples I heard I clearly hear a /w/.    Or would bravec be pronounced with a /w/ anyway?

Curious thing.  While searching for pronunciations, I stumbled upon this, a female Slovene pronouncing čutil with both an L and a W.


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## Panceltic

In cases other than nominative, _bravca/bralca_, _igravci/igralci_, _prodajavcem/prodajalcem_ etc. are all meant to be pronounced with a /w/. My reckoning is, because they wanted to stress this, the spelling was changed from l to v, and the same had to be done in the nominative, because it would look strange to have a paradigm like _bralec, bravca, bravcu_ ... In 'normal' speech (that is, everything apart from the 'zborni jezik'), the schwa in words like _bralec_ ['bralǝts] is dropped anyway and it is pronounced ['brawts]. One just cannot win 

Concerning _čutil_, these are actually two different words:

1) [tʃùːtiw] is the past participle of the verb _čutiti_ 'to feel', i.e. '(he) felt'
2) [tʃutíːl] is the genitive dual/plural of the noun _čutilo_ 'sensory receptor'*, e.g. _Oko je čutilo za vid._ 'The eye is the sensory receptor for the sight.'

---

* In older language, this word was also used for _emotion_, nowadays _čustvo_.


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## bragpipes

Thank you for your detailed response.

About čutil, wow.  I thought it was two pronunciations of the same word, not two words.  Seeing čutil and not being sure how to pronounce it must be difficult for learners, although it should be very clear from the context - they're not two nouns.   It's not as bad as English, (is anything as bad as English?), but I think that a simple L to Ł would solve most problems.  

It's interesting to see that the forces of language evolution can be stronger than orthography.


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## Panceltic

The problem with Ł is that is has come to be depreciatively associated with people originally from other ex-Yugoslav republics who live in Slovenia. Their Slovenian skills are often debatable, and something that usually gives them away is the 'harder' L they have carried over from their mother tongues. When people are trying to imitate their speech in writing (forums, email, texts etc.), they use the letter Ł. This usage is already so widespread/known that it would probably be considered offensive. 

However, there are also cases where l is pronounced w only in nominative, e.g. _vol_ 'ox' ['vɔw], _vola_ ['vɔla] ... Changing it to voł might work, but voła would be definitely wrong! I personally think that keeping a consistent orthography is better.

Compare Belarusian_ авёс, аўса_ and Slovenian _oves, ovsa_. Looking at the Belorusian forms, it's hard to imagine this is in fact the same word!


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## OBrasilo

Panceltic said:
			
		

> In 'normal' speech (that is, everything apart from the 'zborni jezik'), the schwa in words like _bralec_ ['bralǝts] is dropped anyway and it is pronounced ['brawts].


Certainly not in the Litteral, where ['bralɛts] is the most common pronunciation I've heard, though I guess that's because of the ǝ -> ɛ change, though it doesn't seem to affect monosyllables (ie. pes is still [pǝs], though I've heard [pɛs] as well - and the schwa has carried even to forms of the word where there is no vowel in standard Slovenian ie. Littoralese has [pǝsa] where standard has [psa], though I've observed a trend of Littoralese turning these kind of forms closer to the standard i n the recent years, which might be due to increased communication between the people from here and the rest of Slovenia due to easier travel and the Internet). Littoralese varieties seem to contract things less than central Slovenian dialects (and I think the Ljubljana dialect uses the most contractions I've heard). Though mind you, it's the Koper (and other coastal) Littoralese varieties that I am familiar with, things are most probably different in the non-coastal Littoral (ie. Goriška and parts of Kras).

Edit: And I'd rather not see an attempt to a phonetic orthography for Slovenian. The last time it was tried, it was in the 19th century (Metelčica and Dajnčica) and it ended up starting the ABC war (črkarska pravda in Slovenian), which lasted until they decided to adapt the Ljudevit Gaj alphabet to Slovenian, ending up with the same system we still use today.


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## Christo Tamarin

Sobakus said:


> In Bulgarian the vocalisation of hard L regardless of position (so even between vowels) is prevalent among younger speakers.


Male only. Imitating some male rap singers. Female rap singers still use standard L.


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## Panceltic

OBrasilo said:


> Certainly not in the Litteral, where ['bralɛts] is the most common pronunciation I've heard.



Of course, I am central-Slovenian biased. 



OBrasilo said:


> Littoralese has [pǝsa] where standard has [psa].



Some central Slovenian dialects, including mine, have [pǝs], [pǝ'sa], [pǝ'su]/[pǝ'sǝ] etc.



OBrasilo said:


> And I'd rather not see an attempt to a phonetic orthography for Slovenian.



Agreed


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## Karton Realista

francisgranada said:


> A question _a propos_: Is this L>W (Ł) shift present in all the Polish speaking area, or there are still regions where the original pronunciation (L) survives?


Probably in some eastern subdialects, like gwara lwowska (by eastern I mean spoken in modern day Belarus and Ukraine, where the two big Polish dialects are located).
I wouldn't say it survives there, it's reinvented.


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