film=fillum

[Paul Johnston]

There aren't many words with /lm/ --which is a pretty marginal cluster
in English (elm is often ellum, too).  A lot of the dialects that gave
birth to American English--Scots and Southwestern English for two,
disallow this cluster.  We inherited that, so we, like those dialects,
break the cluster up by inserting a vowel in between.  The same dialects
also tend to disallow /ln/ as in kiln, > kill.

Paul Johnston
On Friday, May 27, 2005, at 08:20  PM, Sam Clements wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Sam Clements <SClements at NEO.RR.COM>
> Subject:      film=fillum
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Why do some people pronounce the word "film" as "fillum?"
>
> Layman here.
>
> Sam Clements