Does /Ĩ/ *really* exist in Southwestern Mandarin?

Question

成都话方言词典 (1987) lists a bunch of words under the IPA initial /Ĩ/.

Southwestern Mandarin doesn't seem to actually have this initial according to most other resources who put all the /Ĩ/ listed words under the initial /n/.

For example 成都话方言词典 lists 路 as /Ĩu/ (ignoring tones for now) whereas most other resources list it as /nu/. The /Ĩu/ IPA results in a 'pinyin' of lu while the /nu/ IPA gives a pinyin of nu.

I can't find anything to back up 成都话方言词典's usage of /Ĩ/, regardless, my real question is:

• Does /Ĩ/ really exist in Southwestern Mandarin?

Answer 1

Yes they use /l/. People from the Southwest sometimes can not distinguish /n/ and /l/ very well. For example, 牛奶 [milk], in standard mandarin it should be [niu2 nai3]; however, people from the southwest usually say [liu12 lai4]; even if when they are trying to speak mandarin, they prounance like [liu2 lai3].

Answer 2

In "literary" Southwestern Mandarin, there is an n initial, as in 你 ni, as well as an ng initial, as in 我. It's a different literary standard to Standard Chinese but has parallels. However, while this is technically the case, with the rise of Standard Chinese, literary SW Mandarin is disappearing. Vernacular SW Mandarin, however, is not. And in common speech, n becomes l and the ng inital is lost, resulting in 你 li and 我 o. This is also the case in many Southern and Eastern Mandarin dialects.