What happens with the letter “l” in the word “calm?”
Seydi Salas, another BIN-02 student (3rd Quarter-2010), had the following doubt in regards to words with Latin “a” and /l/: "What happens with the “l” in the transcription of the word "calm?”
There is a group of words in English ending in –alm. What seems to be the interesting thing about this word ending is the absence of the letter “l” in its pronunciation. The sequence –alm at the end of words is pronounced /am/. The letter “l” is just a spelling device that probably comes from Latin, but that it not pronounced anymore in modern English.
Take a look at the following words:
| calm | /kam/ |
| palm | /pam/ |
| psalm | /sam/ |
| balm | /bam/ |
| napalm | /’neypam/ |
As stated here, the presence of this word ending in English, -alm, is not very common, and just a few words exist in the language. However, it is very important to keep in mind that this sequence of letters at the end of the words listed above is pronounced with a Latin “a” and a /m/-sound.
