From DeKalb County to the Falkland Islands, folks are talking calmly about polka dots.
The above nonsensical sentence has one unifying theme: silent Ls. All of the six such Ls are tucked between a vowel and a consonant. Beyond that, they represent the soundless L’s diversity of origin, application and pronunciation.
DeKalb is the trickiest of the silent L words. If you’re talking about DeKalb County, there’s no L within earshot: It’s pronounced de-COBB, after an American Revolutionary War hero. But if you’re referring to DeKalb County, Illinois—named after the very same man—you’ll employ a traditional L: de-KALB.
There’s not much tricky about the words palm, psalm and embalm. Rather than producing their own discreet sounds, the Ls here are influential. That is, they sway the sound of the words in which they appear, leaving a soothing—dare I say calming—balm.
Not so soothing are talk, walk, balk, chalk, stalk and Falklands. In these words, the A goes flat when followed immediately by LK. The sound is AWK, as in awkward. Speaking of awkward, try your tongue at calve, halve and salve. Again, the L is silent, but it influences the letters around it. And there’s an added quirk among these ALV words. If you remove the L from halve, the new word sounds the same as the old. But remove the L from calve and salve, and the result—cave and save—is a completely different sound.
And then there are these L-related anomalies: almond, which may be pronounced with or without the L; solder, which looks like it should rhyme with bolder, but actually rhymes with fodder; and colonel, which replaces a soundless L with an inexplicable R.
My advice: Watch those Ls closely, or you may be saying, “ coulda, woulda, shoulda.”