Laser
A common example of an acronym, the initial sounds of the words which compose it being pronounced as a single word. Others include NATO, UNESCO, and radar . (Crystal 2005: 457). In most cases, most speakers would probably be unable to actually name the words which originally made up the acronym, nor is there any need for this, and frequently speakers would not even know they are acronyms, at least in words like radar and laser where the spelling has been standardised, whereas in NATO and UNESCO the use of capitals suggests they are acronyms. A nice example to show how spelling can contribute to speakers’ knowledge about language.
Length
Very often, when pronouncing this word, people introduce an additional sound, a /k/, which is not represented in the spelling, making it / l e ÷ k T / . This introduction of an additional sound is called epenthesis. (Davis 2004: 50)
Lie
A word which is often confused with lay, not only by foreign learners of English. Salinger makes use of this by making his narrator, Holden Caulfield, a boy who has just flunked school – although he did get a pass in English – erroneously use lay throughout the book (Salinger 2003): “Then I laid down on Ely’s bed again.” (p. 49) – “She’s been laying here all night without a wink of sleep” (p. 65-6) – “Later I saw Jane laying on her stomach next to the swimming pool.” (p. 76)
Like
‘His countenance likes me not’, says the Duke of Kent, one of the characters in Shakespeare’s King Lear, when asked why he has given Regan’s steward Oswald a beating. As nice a reason as any. “Why did you beat him up? I just didn’t like his face.” What is interesting here is not only what is said but also how it is said, not ‘I did not like his countenance’, but ‘His countenance did not like me’. How can a face like somebody? The answer is that the word like is here used in its original construction, like German gefallen: ‘His countenance liked me not – Sein Gesicht gefiel mir nicht’. It then underwent a curious change, and is now used like German mögen : ‘I did not like his countenance – Ich mochte sein Gesicht nicht’. An good example to illustrate syntactic change, this type of change being much slower and rarer than changes in pronunciation or word meaning.
Like the curate’s egg – good in parts
A cartoon in Punch shows a timid curate eating a bad egg at his bishop’s house and, not wanting to tell a straightforward lie, bravely saying that ‘parts of it are excellent’. This cartoon nicely combines picture and words to refer to the idiom like the curate’s egg – good in parts. The idiom is often halved so that each half may be heard independently. You use it to say that something is a haphazard mixture of good and bad. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 81)
Love
If you listen to the Beatles singing “All You Need is Love”, you may be surprised to hear what it sounds like if they sing “Love, love, love”. The vowel rather sounds like the vowel in nurse (though not so long). If this is not the standard pronunciation, it may well be their native Liverpool pronunciation. But it isn’t that either, because then the vowel would not have sounded like that in nurse but rather like that in bush. So here we have a third variety. This is the way this vowel is realised in some varieties of modern American English, a variety that is often imitated in pop songs. The vowel has gradually moved from farther back to a central position and from here upwards and merged with the vowel in nurse. (cf. Davis 2004: 41)
Lunch (1)
In careful pronunciation, there are three consonants at the end of the word. Many native speakers, in fluent speech, drop one of them, the one in the middle, /t/. Another example is change , where the /d/ is dropped. These are two very common examples of elision. (Davis 2004: 138)
Lunch (2)
A lunch or luncheon was originally a thick piece of food. People spoke of a luncheon of cheese or a lunch of bacon. Then, in the 17th century, luncheon began to move in the direction of its modern meaning. It began to refer to a light repast, taken between main meals, either between breakfast and dinner or between dinner and supper. (Crystal 2012: 170)
Lull
Although most native speakers would probably claim that there is only one in the language, the two l-sounds in this word, the one at the beginning and the one at the end, are different, at least in RP. The first is what is often called `light l’, the second ‘dark l’. The difference between them is that ‘dark l’ is velarized, i.e. the back of the tongue is raised during the articulation.