L-vocalization, in linguistics, is a process by which a lateral approximant sound such as [l], or, perhaps more often, velarized [ɫ], is replaced by a vowel or a semivowel.
L-vocalization has occurred, since Early Modern English, in certain -al- and -ol- sequences before coronal or velar consonants, or at the end of a word or morpheme.
[1] At the end of a word or morpheme, it produced all, ball, call, control, droll, extol, fall, gall, hall, knoll, mall, pall, poll, roll, scroll, small, squall, stall, stroll, swollen, tall, thrall, toll, troll and wall.
Before coronal consonants, it produced Alderney, alter, bald, balderdash, bold, cold, false, falter, fold, gold, halt, hold, malt, molten, mould/mold, old, palsy, salt, shoulder (earlier sholder), smolder, told, wald, Walter and wold (in the sense of "tract of land").
L-vocalization established a pattern that would influence the spelling pronunciations of some relatively more recent loanwords like Balt, Malta, polder, waltz and Yalta.
However, certain words of more recent origin or coining do not exhibit the change and retain short vowels, including Al, alcohol, bal, Cal, calcium, doll, gal, Hal, mal-, Moll, pal, Poll, Sal, talc, and Val.
The loss of /l/ in words spelt with -alf, -alm, -alve and -olm did not involve L-vocalization in the same sense, but rather the elision of the consonant and usually the compensatory lengthening of the vowel.
[2] However, in recent decades, l-vocalization has been spreading outwards from London and the southeast;[3][4] John C. Wells argued that it is probable that it will become the standard pronunciation in England over the next one hundred years,[5] which Petyt criticised in a book review.
[10] In colloquial varieties of modern standard German, including the northern Missingsch, there is a moderate tendency to vocalise coda /l/ into /ɪ̯/, especially in casual speech.
This type of vocalization of /l/, such as [sɑwts] for Salz, is recently spreading into many Western Swiss German dialects, centred around Emmental.
For example, all changed to aw, colt to cowt, ful to fou (full) and the rare exception hald to haud (hold).
In Portuguese, historical [ɫ] (/l/ in the syllable coda) has become [u̯ ~ ʊ̯] for most Brazilian dialects, and it is common in rural communities of Alto Minho and Madeira.
However, in some final positions and in nouns only, Croatian keeps the /l/ by analogy with other forms: stol, vol, sol vs. Serbian sto, vo, so (meaning "table", "ox" and "salt" respectively).
For example, mały ("small" in both Polish and Sorbian) is pronounced by most speakers as [ˈmawɨ] (compare Russian малый [ˈmalɨj]).
For example, the Ukrainian and Belarusian word for "wolf" is вовк [ʋɔwk] and воўк [vowk] as opposed to Russian вoлк [voɫk].