film=fillum

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>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.

Is this epenthesis /lm/ > /l at m/ really universal in Scots, even at the end
of a monosyllable? My little "Concise Scots Dictionary" doesn't show it (it
does show "kiln"/"kill"/"kell" /kIl/), and at a glance neither does the SND.

It is said that this is common in Irish English too. Several such
epentheses are conventional in Gaelic according to my limited
understanding, which might could influence Scots and Irish English, and I
suppose maybe Southwestern English might be influenced by Cornish in
parallel fashion?

If some US-ans ("we" in the above) inherited this from Scots etc., why
didn't I, or most of my US-an acquaintances? Is it regional in the US?

-- Doug Wilson