pom / palm

[Dale Coye]

For me palm, balm, almond, Palmer, calm are pronounced without /l/ and are
exactly the same as pom, bomb, Com-.   This I think I am right in saying, was
the usual Northern US way of doing things, until the spelling
pronunciationists got involved and the /l/s came back in, cf. "often" with
/t/.  I think it was Thomas Murray in a St. Louis study who showed that the
lower classes maintained /l/-less ness in these words, but the upper classes
were putting them back in after centuries of having been lost.   In E. New
England there was also no /l/ in the good old days, but the vowel of palm was
the same as the vowel of r-less car (so calm and car have the same low front
vowel, lower and distinct from ash) while Com-, etc. has a low back rounded
vowel, the same as the vowel in Caught.
  Don't know what the Southern situation is, but would guess that /l/ is
coming back there too....or is it possible that it's always been there
through the centuries at the dialect level?  Does the UK have /l/ in these
words in any dialects?  I don't think so, certainly not in RP.  /l/ was also
lost after ash (half, calf, salmon, and should be lost in salve, but
especially in the verb has made a big comeback for those who use it in, in
Shakespeare, for example),  or in folk, yolk.

Dale Coye