(linguistics) The change in pronunciation of historically or variably consonant (typically sonorant) sounds as vowels. For example, the syllabic /l/ in words like people or the coda one in words like cold or coal are variably realized as a high back vowel or glide"”[ÊŠ], [u], [ɤ] or [o]"”in many dialects of English in the US, UK, and the Southern Hemisphere. For example, in African American Vernacular English, one common pronunciation of the words "people", "cold", and "coal" is [pʰipÊŠ], [kʰoɤd], or [kʰoɤ] respectively.