What happened to the L in salmon?

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#177487 - 06/16/08 04:13 PM Re: two air is humane [Re: Myridon]
zmjezhd Carpal Tunnel Registered: 08/13/05 Posts: 3269 Loc: R'lyeh	uhahihyan That's close enough for Web purposes. (For the record, I pronounce eye /ʔʌɪ/ and yearn /jɚn/.) J. Ron Flutterbye _________________________ Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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#177490 - 06/16/08 05:11 PM Re: two air is humane [Re: zmjezhd]
twosleepy old hand Registered: 02/28/08 Posts: 876 Loc: western NY	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...)
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#177493 - 06/16/08 07:40 PM Re: What happened to the L in salmon? [Re: zmjezhd]
The Pook old hand Registered: 02/20/08 Posts: 1067 Loc: Tasmania	Originally Posted By: zmjezhd 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). Not to mention walk, talk, calf, calm, palm, balm, caulk and baulk.
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#177494 - 06/16/08 08:08 PM Re: two air is humane [Re: twosleepy]
The Pook old hand Registered: 02/20/08 Posts: 1067 Loc: Tasmania	Originally Posted By: twosleepy 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...) 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)
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