pom / palm

[David Bergdahl]

I wouldn't dream of inserting an L in palm, salmon &c. or a T in often: to
me it's decidedly NC, so I am puzzled by the claim by "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."

For my speech I would agree that "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)" but since the cot-vowel is unrounded for me it's
possible that pom has the more back vowel and palm the more central one.

BTW, for me almond is L-less and has a long low ash.
_________________________________
"Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber Boshaft ist er nicht"
--Albert Einstein