I realize heâs talking about the pronunciation âin Californiaâ, but even so, if Iâm reading that article correctly, the author is saying that 70% of even almond growers pronounce it with the L ?. That seems really strange to me, since I canât recall (iny 56 years of life) ever hearing anyone pronounce it that way⌠native (US) English speaker or otherwise. (Though never having heard a California native pronounce âamondâ, maybe itâs different than what I  think of as âalmond with a silent Lâ? L is a funny sound, and I guess itâs possible what I think of as L-less-almond really has a very faint âswallowedâ/laryngeal L tucked in between the A and the M⌠)
That possibility aside, I wonder if thereâs a regional aspect to that? Iâve lived my whole life on the Atlantic coastline in between Cape Cod and Philadelphia, mostly in NYC. But thinking back to the old âsometimes you feel like a nutâ Almond Joy TV commercials, even they pronounced it âamondâ as far as I can remember. And while I guess there couldâve been regional variations of it, that does seem to suggest the L-less pronunciation is (or at least was) pretty widespreadâŚ
I think youâre right about the strangled L in almond. Thatâs a more accurate description of how I pronounce it. Long Island speech is now different than when I grew up there ( Iâm 70; an eastward exodus from Brooklyn and Queens has since brought an accent to Nassau County). Lived in western NY briefly, but most of my life in the Boston area, studiously avoiding adoption of its accent.
Huh. More, or maybe different, newness. Pronouncing the second syllable âendâ would certainly be totally new to me, Iâve always heard that  pronounced with what is conventionally called a âshort Uâ in English, or schwaâŚ
FWIW my Mom was born and raised in NYC and she always pronounced the âLâ. Of course her mother was from England so that could have had an influence.
A âdefiniteâ L (for lack of a better term, like the L in Allman), or a sort of âswallowedâ L that âmakes its presence knownâ without sounding like a clear L? (Fwiw, both of my parents were also born and raised here, and they both pronounce(d) it the way I do, without a distinctly discernable L. )
As best I can remember (itâs been 20 years) she said âahlmundsâ. It wasnât Almunds where the âalâ is like the manâs name Al.
