After reading the sherbert article on MSN I was wondering if anyone could explain the pronunciation of salmon. I'm from the south and like most Southerners I pronounce the L. Most of the time you can simply go by how a similar word is promounced. Example aunt, ant/aunt?, it's aunt obviously in spite of most southerners saying "ant". Unless you're from Boston you're going to pronounce the L in falcon. So what happened to pronouncing the L in salmon?

Hmmm. Maybe there's a room where the silent letters go, next to the room with the letters that should be silent but get pronounced, are having a party. It is so ironic that people who are trying to sound well-educated will carefully pronounce "often" as off-ten when the "t" is actually silent; it rhymes with "soften" (which no one would pronounce soff-ten; at least I've never heard it!) So there you go; no answers, just more questions... :0)

Salmon is one of those words, like perfect, where an etymological spelling has confused folks (no l there either). When it was borrowed into Middle English via Norman it was spelled and pronounced without the l: samoun. Later, people who knew some Latin realized that there should be an l in it (i.e., s;a,o, salmonis), and after that it's a hope, skip, and a jump to pronouncing the l. Likewise, perfect came into English as parfit, but after some etymologizing spellifiers got a hold of that one, we ended up, today, spelling and saying perfect. The sound of an l after a vowel and before another consonant is pronounced with secondary articulation (velarized), the so-called dark l (link).

Interesting to note that in "salmonella" the "l" is always pronounced. Go figure...

Speaking of such stuff, how many of you pronounce the r in iron?

Speaking of such stuff, how many of you pronounce the r in iron?

Depends on what you mean by r. I pronounce iron as /ʔʌɪjɚn/ in casual speech or /ʔaɪjɚn/ in more formal speech. (This chart may help link.)

I don't earn my keep like Ron Obvious.

^ I knew that was coming!

* light applause *

Where I hail from, iron sounds like ion. Hence, for a long time I misheard Leonard Cohen singing, "O mask of Aaron, I was there for you," and tried like a fool to chase up the obscure reference to this Aaron fellow and his mask.

No, doesn't help... using the chart, I get something like uhahihyan - I think I'd rather go back to the dancing architecture.

'Round these parts, it's pernounced eye urn.

uhahihyan

That's close enough for Web purposes. (For the record, I pronounce eye /ʔʌɪ/ and yearn /jɚn/.)

J. Ron Flutterbye

Same here on the pronunciation. Funny how "ironic" is not usually pronounced "eye yearn ick"... :0)

Soooo, that leads me to "irony". Let's vote: eye run ee or eye earn ee ???

I'll go first: eye earn ee (although I have been known to use the other; I guess I'm bipronuncial on that one...)

Not to mention walk, talk, calf, calm, palm, balm, caulk and baulk.

I would say eye-un (where u=schwa). Non rhotic promunciation, no voiced 'r' sound. (IPA ɑeən). For ironing sometimes I would pronounce the 'r' - eye-ronning, though most times I would say eye-uh-ning or eye-ning. But for irony it would be eye-ronny or eye-ruh-nee (ie IPA ɑerəniː)