It's "sodder", not "soLder", damnit! (for us USAians)

[Zero999]

Speaking as someone who was once a PhD student in Linguistics:  the question is really "why do people in the UK pronounce it "soLder?" 

It's very common to have a "silent l" (so to speak) before oral stops (b, p, t, d, g, k) in English.  Think about words like "would, could, walk, talk, yolk, etc."  The "l" in all of these words is not normally pronounced.  By analogy, no one should be surprised that "solder" is pronounced as "sodder"

The (mostly British) pronunciation of the "l" is basically a conscious "overcorrecting"  This overcorrecting would (haha) be hard to apply to extremely common words, which is why "would, could" are never pronounced with an "l" sound. 

But for semi-common words that you don't hear very often (and see mostly in written form), it's easy to start pronouncing them "phonetically' because you aren't entirely sure how they are pronounced. "Folk" and "yolk" (semi-uncommon words) are good examples - some people do pronounce the "l" . 

I would bet serious money that non-technical speakers on both side of the Atlantic (or Pacific) would say "soLder" when they first see that word for the first time.

So again, the question is really "Why do British people artificially pronounce the l?  Sometimes the answer is societal, not linguistic: if there were a famous song, a book, etc. in the UK where the person said "soLder" then that might have influenced other speakers to also pronounce it the same way.

And if you think that's a stretch - I can hear a clear inter-generational difference in the way Americans pronounce the word "frontier" - those who grew up with the original Star Trek and those who did not.  Thank you again William Shatner for permanently scarring my pronunciation of this word 

On the contrary. Most people on both sides of the Atlantic and the commonwealth pronounce the L in sold, so it's a little surprising most Americans don't pronounce the L in solder.

I don't think overcorrection comes into this. Yes there are instances where people do overcorrect such as pronouncing the H sound in some place names twice, so Southampton is pronounced as South hampton, rather than South ampton or pronouncing the T in words where it has traditionally been silent i.e. restaurant.

[tooki]

On "mute" L's.  The Spanish.  The number of places I have been where there are clearly L's in the place name but none are pronounced in Spain tops most other "L's omissions".

LIterally went paragliding in "Montellano".   Pronounced.  "Monti-ano."

There was another one, I'll butcher the spelling, but Collolyte.  Pronounced like Coyote.

Yeah, that’s not a “mute” L.

It’s that the double-L (which historically was treated as a separate letter in the alphabet!) is the “y” sound (almost identical to the initial consonant of “yes”) in most dialects of Spanish. Spanish has both the letter ll and the letter y, and they sound the same because ll originally represented a different sound, but in most dialects they merged to the “y” sound.

Some regional dialects of Spanish retain the original pronunciation, and in others it changed to different sounds. (Among the sounds is something approximating the English “j” sound, as Aldo22 said.) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeísmo.

But what ll never was, nor is, is silent.


(I grew up bilingual Spanish-English as a kid, and my Guatemalan dialect puts me among the ~90% of Spanish speakers for whom ll and y are identical.)

[pdenisowski]

It's a dark L, and in the same way "dark matter" is so called because we can't see it, the "dark L" is so called because we can't hear it. It modifies the shape of the tongue which affects the sound of the vowel/consonant pair, but there is no actual L sound.

The sounds /l/ and /r/ are problematic because in many cases there is no "fixed point of articulation" - i.e. what parts of your mouth and tongue touch together when you make those sounds. 

Most American English speakers make an "l" by touching their tongue to their alveolar ridge (the gun right behind and above the front teeth), but there are many other ways to make a sound that is perceived to be an "l", the "dark l" being one of them.  Because there is often no point of articulation, the "dark l" sounds like a vowel (or a semi-vowel / glide) to some people.  [Vowels don't have a point of articulation - i.e. the parts of your mouth (teeth, tongue, lips, etc.) don't touch each other during a vowel]

No native English speaker I know pronounces "walk" with a alveolar l - which would sound like "wal-uk"  Rather, they pronounce it as a dark l - more like "wahk"  In fact, there are many native English speakers who pronounce "walk" and "wok" (the Chinese cooking pan) identically.

It's not artificial! It's how everyone pronounces it. There are loads of similar words where we pronounce the 'l': boulder, folder, colder, holder, older, shoulder, smoulder.

Yes. but while people do use an alveolar l in words like "boulder" and "shoulder" in careful or semi-careful speech, a lot of people also essentially "drop the l" in these words too.  When I (jokingly) affect a non-American accent , I pronounce these like "bowda" and "showda"

[Zero999]

'Buoy' is pronounced 'boy', innit?

Nope; "boo-ee" here in N. America.

That's odd. I've never heard anyone pronounce buoy like that. How do you say: buoyant and buoyancy? Is it boo-ee ant and boo ee n see?

Speaking as someone who was once a PhD student in Linguistics:  the question is really "why do people in the UK pronounce it "soLder?" 

It's very common to have a "silent l" (so to speak) before oral stops (b, p, t, d, g, k) in English.  Think about words like "would, could, walk, talk, yolk, etc."  The "l" in all of these words is not normally pronounced.  By analogy, no one should be surprised that "solder" is pronounced as "sodder"

This is the bit that puzzles me. In my (British) accent, I pronounce solder in a way somewhat similar to words like walk and talk that you mention. The main difference from the USA is that I use the soul vowel sound rather than the hot vowel sound. So my pronunciation of solder is somewhat akin to sou(l)der (where the L glides into the D and mostly disappears). In fact, the same vowel sound I would us in the word "fold", which also has a similarly silent L. For me, folder and solder both rhyme, and both have something between a dark L and a silent L.

I think a lot of people imagine the L sound to be present, when it isn't really there.

What do you mean by the soul and hot vowel sounds? I pronounce the o the same in hot and soul. Do you pronounce soul as so-well and solder as so -lder? I've heard those variations before but I believe they're not widespread.

[IanB]

What do you mean by the soul and hot vowel sounds? I pronounce the o the same in hot and soul. Do you pronounce soul as so-well and solder as so -lder? I've heard those variations before but I believe they're not widespread.

I mean as they sound in Standard Southern British:

Hot: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/hot

Soul: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/soul

(Listen to the UK pronunciations)

Digression:

When my baby brother was learning to speak, he was saying "dight" instead of "light".

The way we make the "D" sound and the way we make the "L" sound are remarkably similar. In both cases the tip of the tongue curls up and touches the roof of the mouth at the front, behind the teeth, and we voice the sound.

So if we now try to voice the consonant pair "LD", it is nearly impossible. The "L" part of the sound is swallowed by the "D" sound.

Try an experiment:

In a British accent, card has an "ah" vowel: "c-ah-d".

Code has an "oh" vowel: "c-oh-d".

Soul has an "ou" vowel: "s-ou-l".

With a listening volunteer, say the following sounds and ask them what word they hear:

"c-ah-d" ?
"c-oh-d" ?
"c-ou-d" ?

[TimFox]

Park the car in Harvard Yard.

[IanB]

What do you mean by the soul and hot vowel sounds? I pronounce the o the same in hot and soul. Do you pronounce soul as so-well and solder as so -lder? I've heard those variations before but I believe they're not widespread.

For me, hot rhymes with what and bot.

Soul rhymes with coal and hole.

[themadhippy]

So if we now try to voice the consonant pair "LD", it is nearly impossible

is it?  its a fairly common phrase in the world of entertainment,its  the lazy way of saying lighting designer

[Analog Kid]

Wut, are you seriously arguing that everybody should pronounce things the way you do? Really?

Honestly Im fine as long as you call it "American English". 

Fine, then just be sure to call your version of it "British English".

Sheesh. The air here is thick with provincialism ...

[Analog Kid]

'Buoy' is pronounced 'boy', innit?

Nope; "boo-ee" here in N. America.

That's odd. I've never heard anyone pronounce buoy like that.

Really? That's how just about all of us pronounce it over heah.

How do you say: buoyant and buoyancy? Is it boo-ee ant and boo ee n see?

Nope, doesn't follow: it's "boy-ent" and "boy-en-see".
Don't ask me why those are different ...

[Monkeh]

Wut, are you seriously arguing that everybody should pronounce things the way you do? Really?

Honestly Im fine as long as you call it "American English". 

Fine, then just be sure to call your version of it "British English".

Why? "English" is already an adequate descriptor for a language from England.

Do we need to have "French French"?

[brucehoult]

Again, this must be a Northern Irish thing. In all my years living in England I've never heard anyone pronounce it like that - never. It is always pronounced "yott".

Yes.  Yott or yaught.  The elongated yawt is how "posh" people try and make it sound posh.  You know the sort I mean.

With their Jaaaaag.

You have to say Jaaaaaaaag. It's the law.

I came this > < close to buying a used Jaaaaaag when I moved to the US in 2019. My boss had been lending it to me on my 3-monthly visits while waiting the the H-1B and said he'd sell it for $2000.

It looked sexy and drove very nicely, so I kind of thought it should be fine since it was really an AWD Mondeo under the skin, but I took it to a mechanic and they said it urgently needed $10k of work. Ugh.

But ... Jaaaaaaaaag!

[negativ3]

Shaguar.

[Analog Kid]

Wut, are you seriously arguing that everybody should pronounce things the way you do? Really?

Honestly Im fine as long as you call it "American English". 

Fine, then just be sure to call your version of it "British English".

Why? "English" is already an adequate descriptor for a language from England.

As it is for the language spoken here in the U.S.

Unless you have some problem with that.

[Analog Kid]

Shaguar.

I thought it was more like "jag-yOOOOO-ar".

Really the only thing that I cannot stand is a Brit trying to pronounce "Nicaragua".
They emit the most horrendous, tortured sounds possible in the process.

[negativ3]

Shaguar.

I thought it was more like "jag-yOOOOO-ar".

Really the only thing that I cannot stand is a Brit trying to pronounce "Nicaragua".
They emit the most horrendous, tortured sounds possible in the process.

Non-Brits trying "Edinburgh" is a source of fleetingly brief amusement.

[Analog Kid]

Non-Brits trying "Edinburgh" is a source of fleetingly brief amusement.

I still don't understand: is it pronounced as it looks ("burg", which seems right to me), or is it "Edinborough" as I hear it so often said?

[Monkeh]

As it is for the language spoken here in the U.S.

Unless you have some problem with that.

Obviously, I do. Clearly there are distinct differences, and in order to clarify the distinction, the form not from England requires an additional descriptor. Again, unless you want to have French French, German German, and Spanish Spanish, there's no need to further clarify where English comes from.

[Analog Kid]

As it is for the language spoken here in the U.S.

Unless you have some problem with that.

Obviously, I do. Clearly there are distinct differences, and in order to clarify the distinction, the form not from England requires an additional descriptor. Again, unless you want to have French French, German German, and Spanish Spanish, there's no need to further clarify where English comes from.

Well, there is Castillian Spanish as distinct from what's spoken in Latin America, so apparently we already have those.

[negativ3]

Non-Brits trying "Edinburgh" is a source of fleetingly brief amusement.

I still don't understand: is it pronounced as it looks ("burg", which seems right to me), or is it "Edinborough" as I hear it so often said?

Edinbara is much closer to correct, phonetically.

[Monkeh]

As it is for the language spoken here in the U.S.

Unless you have some problem with that.

Obviously, I do. Clearly there are distinct differences, and in order to clarify the distinction, the form not from England requires an additional descriptor. Again, unless you want to have French French, German German, and Spanish Spanish, there's no need to further clarify where English comes from.

Well, there is Castillian Spanish as distinct from what's spoken in Latin America, so apparently we already have those.

And that's simply called Spanish, unless you're specifically differentiating between local dialects in Spain.

[Analog Kid]

Edinbara is much closer to correct, phonetically.

So how does "burgh" transmogrify into "bara"? Seems like there's an intrusive syllable there.

[IanB]

I still don't understand: is it pronounced as it looks ("burg", which seems right to me), or is it "Edinborough" as I hear it so often said?

It's neither. It's Edinbrə, sort of close to "Edinbruh" or "Edinbra".

[paulca]

I still don't understand: is it pronounced as it looks ("burg", which seems right to me), or is it "Edinborough" as I hear it so often said?

It's neither. It's Edinbrə, sort of close to "Edinbruh" or "Edinbra".

Thats what I say and it's what has been ranted to me by people from there.  Its "Bruh" no borough.   Ed-in-bru.

My English friend got the train from the airport to my house and the first she said was, "How the hell do you prounounce the half of that?"

I think she might have been caught by places like "Cultra".  Cul-traw.  Knocknagoney. 

On that train... for well over 10 years travelling to work every morning and home in the evenings and I had to listen to the recorded English southern voice say my town name wrong, twice for every stop.  "Bang Gor". Its the better version against "Banger".  or "Bang - Or"  or "Ban gor".  The G is pronounced twice - in both syllables and it's then rolled into two short syllables.  Bang'gor.  Just two short, tightly packed syllables.  Most people over pronounce it.  No accent on the "O" so its almost like an e.  Like if you said "Banger" but pronounced the G again in the 'er' sylluble.  Bang'ger.

You would think when they commissioned the voice recording they would have picked someone who could pronounce the station names.  My town was not the only one butchered.  "Cultra" got it too.

[SteveThackery]

Not everyone. And it's misleading when you say "pronounce the L". It's a dark L, and in the same way "dark matter" is so called because we can't see it, the "dark L" is so called because we can't hear it. It modifies the shape of the tongue which affects the sound of the vowel/consonant pair, but there is no actual L sound.

There may be some accents where people emphasise the L sound, but it is certainly not "everyone".

Nope, I emphatically do not accept that. Here in England, the 'l' is definitely audible in all the words I listed, with the exception of the London accent, where it is sometimes pronounced as a tight "ooo", or arguably a lengthened "w".

A "dark" 'l' is definitely not an inaudible 'l'. These words - all, fall and cool - all have a dark 'l', and in all of them the 'l' is entirely obvious and clearly audible.

The word "local" begins with a light 'l' and finishes with a dark 'l'. Both are clearly audible as an 'l'.

This explains it more fully:

https://www.learnenglishsounds.com/en/blog/dark-l-vs-light-l-english-pronunciation

Don't conflate light-'l' and dark-'l' with audible and inaudible.