 A couple of months ago, my church choir was
singing an arrangement of “Balm in Gilead.” I noticed that a friend
of mine and fellow bass was pronouncing the L in “balm.” I pointed
out that the L was silent, as in “palm.” Apparently, he pronounced
the L in that word also, however.
When I started thinking about it, I realized that a
number of words have silent Ls. Some of them are very common, such as
“talk,” “walk,” “half,” and “calf.” These words are
virtually never mispronounced. Less common words with silent Ls are
often mispronounced. Among these are “almond,” “folk,”
“calm,” and “balk.” These mispronunciations are mostly a curious
product of literacy; people see the words in print and, since Ls are not
usually silent, assume the Ls are supposed to be pronounced, even if
they have heard the words pronounced correctly.
Not being a linguist, I have no scholarly
explanation for all these silent Ls, but there seems to be no single
historical pattern to explain the phenomenon.  Some words have apparently
always contained the letter. For example, “yolk” derives from the
Middle English yolke and the Old English geolca, which is
related to geolu (yellow). The word lost the L sound but retained
the letter in its spelling. Other words have stranger histories.
“Colonel,” must surely represent one of the more bizarre cases, having an
L that is not pronounced and lacking an R that is. The word ultimately
derives from the Latin for column, columna. English, however, got
the word from Old French, from which it was first imported as coronel.
Here’s my list of words I’ve been able to
identify that contain silent Ls, as well as a few notes about them.
I’ve grouped words to show spelling similarities, though words in the
same group may not have silent Ls for the same reason. Readers are
invited to add to this list.
More than one reader has complained that my list
includes words that, although they are not pronounced with the
characteristic L sound, have pronunciations “influenced” by the presence
of an L. For example, the L in “calve” does not act as though it is
absent; the words “calve” and “cave” are not homonyms. The point is
well-taken, but I would argue that speaking of the “influence” of a
silent L presumes that English spelling is more systematically phonetic
than it is in actuality. In the list that follows, all I claim is that
the words in the list, at least sometimes, are pronounced without a
characteristic L sound.
| |
DeKalb |
Silent L follows A and is followed by
B. The county in Georgia is pronounced this way. The county in
Illinois, on the other hand, is pronounced with the L. |
|
|
calf
half (also halfback, half-baked, etc.)
Ralph |
Silent L follows A and is followed by
F or the F-sounding PH. “Ralph” is pronounced with an L in
the U.S. In the U.K., however, the name is pronounced "Rayf,"
as in Ralph Vaughn Williams. |
|
|
balk
catafalque
chalk
falcon (also falconer, falconet, etc.)
malkin
stalk
talk
walk (also cakewalk, sidewalk, etc.) |
Silent L follows A and is followed by
K or a K sound. A number of these words (“catafalque,” “falcon,”
“malkin,” etc.) are pronounced by some people with an L and by
other people without a sounded L. |
|
|
Falkland |
Same pattern as above. Apparently, pronunciations
with and without a silent L are considered acceptable. Names are
likely to be less consistent in pronunciation because they so easily
can
be influenced by as few as one person. The L is
pronounced in “Salk,” for example. |
|
|
almond
alms
balm (and balmy)
calm
embalm
Malmesbury
malmsey
napalm
palm (also palmy and palmlike)
palmary
palmate (and palmation)
palmer (and Palmer)
palmerworm
palmist (and palmistry)
Palmolive
psalm (also psalmist and psalmody)
qualm
salmon (also salmonoid and salmonberry) |
Silent L follows A and is followed by
M. William
of Malmesbury was a twelfth-century English monk. Perhaps
“salmon” deserves a separate listing. Interestingly,
“salmonella,” pronounced with the L, is derived from the name of
Daniel E. Salmon, who, presumably, pronounced his name with an
L. Although “palm”—the tree or the part of the hand—is
invariably pronounced without an L sound by the literate,
related words, such as “palmate,” are often, though not
necessarily, pronounced with an L sound. The brand name
“Palmolive” was chosen for a soap made with palm and olive oils. “Psalm,” by the way,
can be a noun or a verb. |
|
| |
Chelmsford |
Silent L follows E and is followed by
M. Chelmsford is a town in Essex (in England) and another in
Massachusetts. Apparently, each may be pronounced with or
without an L sound, though I suspect that, in the U.K., the L is
seldom heard. The Essex town, which dates from Roman times, has
changed its name over the years, but the E-L-M sequence has been
fairly constant. |
|
|
calve
halve
salve |
Silent L follows A and is followed by
V. But other words with similar spelling
do not have a silent L: salvation, solve, valve. “Halve” has
the homonym “have.” |
|
|
baulk
caulk
Faulkner
haulm |
Silent L follows A-U and is followed
by K. (“Baulk” is a variant of “balk,” of course.) |
|
|
solder |
Silent L follows O and is followed by
D. But we also
have: bolder, colder, holder, and molder. Like “colonel,”
this word has an odd history, in which the L was dropped, then
added back. |
|
|
folk
folksy
Norfolk
Polk
polka
polka dot
Suffolk
yolk |
Silent L follows O and is followed
by K. Polk, of course, was an American President. “Polka” can be pronounced with the L silent or not.
The L in “polka dot,” however, is always silent. |
|
| |
pastillage
Villa |
Double L, imported from other
languages. “Pastillage,” pronounced pah-stee-ahhj, is of French
origin and refers to a type of sugar paste icing that hardens. “Pancho”
Villa was a Mexican general, whose name is simply pronounced
via. |
|
|
Chisholm
Cholmondeley
holm
Holmbridge
Holme
Holmfirth
Holmes
Malcolm
Olmsted
Stockholm |
Silent L follows O and is followed
by M. Many readers will be unfamiliar with the British name “Cholmondeley,”
pronounced, inexplicably, Chum-ley. (This 12-letter name has
five silent letters, two of them vowels.) “Holm” is not often used in the U.S. It is of Scandinavian
origin and refers to an island in a river. This is, of course, related to “Stockholm.” Non-silent Ls are acceptable both in
“holm” and “Stockholm.” “Holmbridge,” “Holme,” and “Holmfirth”
are all names of English towns on the River Holme, presumably
names of Viking origin. |
|
|
Lincoln |
Silent L follows O and is followed by
N. |
|
|
colonel |
Silent L between two Os. I doubt
there is another word that follows this pattern. |
|
|
could
should
would |
Silent L follows O-U and is followed
by D. |
|
| |
yarmulke |
This word, denoting a Jewish
skullcap, has a Yiddish, Polish, Ukrainian, and Turkic origin.
It occurs often enough in English speech to be considered part
of the English language, but I know of no other English word
following a similar orthographic pattern. Dictionaries offer
several alternative pronunciations for this word, but it is
often pronounced with a silent L. |
|
| |
Wrocław (Wroclaw) |
Wrocław (Breslau in German) is a city
of more than half a million people in southwestern Poland. It
has, at times, been part of Germany, Bohemia, Austria, and
Prussia. The name is pronounced something like “vrotswaf” or “vrotslav,”
neither of which seems very natural from an American viewpoint.
I suspect that Poland has other place names with a non-sounded
L. (Thanks to Julia Sommer for pointing out “Wrocław,” a name I
would have been unlikely to find on my own.) |
|
— LED, 3/26/2003, last revised 12/12/2018 |
