salmon or sam-mon?

I say Salmon, you say Sam-mon. Here's why.

I've often wondered why some words are not pronounced the way they are spelled. Why do people sometimes drop a letter or add a letter when saying a word? For example, one of the most mispronounced English words is "realtor." It's a new word – only one hundred years old. It means a real estate professional who is a member of the National Association of Realtors. Television ads, news anchors – and even my last three real estate agents –  say "REE-lit-or." After a century of  mispronouncing "realtor" we should make the mispronunciation the official pronunciation; keep the spelling but recognize the mispronunciation as the "correct" way to say it. It won't be the first time that's happened. 

Look at the word "salmon." Real Southerners most often say "SAL-mon", like it's spelled, and are just about the last English speakers to do so. Certain Northerners pronounce it "see-YA-mon." And all British people now say "SAM-mon", although four hundred years ago upper-class Brits said "SAL-mon", leading to today's spelling. 

So what happened? About 27 or 28 centuries ago the Latins (early Romans) needed a word for fish. They chose "salmo" – maybe it was to imitate a splash sound; maybe they got it from an older language. Maybe a fish face reminded them of their pal Salmo. But for whatever reason they chose "salmo." 

Fast-forward a bunch of centuries to the early French people, the Gauls. They wanted to copy the more sophisticated Latin language and chose the Latin word "salmo" as their word for fish. Fast-forward again after the Gauls identified as French, who added the letter "N" to salmo. When the word "salmon" reached Normandy, at the northern end of France, the Norman peasants  dropped the "L". As the Normans Intermingled with British fishermen in the English Channel they passed on their word to the Britts, but instead of using the word to mean fish (the English already had a perfectly good word for fish –  "fish") – they chose it to mean a type of fish, namely Salmon. 

The working-class English pronounced "salmon" the same way as the English fishermen – "SAM-mon". But when the upperclass Englishmen, who were generally of French extraction and were educated in Latin, heard "SAM-mon", they knew the history of the word and added back the "L" so that it was pronounced the way their uppity cousins in Paris said it. 

Now cross over the big pond to the Jamestown colony in Virginia. The English upper-classes, the Anglo-Normans, made up about twenty-five percent of Jamestown's earliest settlers and they brought "SAL-mon" to Virginia. As people migrated out of Jamestown to new places in the South, they took the "SAL-mon" pronunciation with them. 

Back across the big pond, the French eventually settled on a new word for fish: poisson. However, they borrowed the word "salmon" back from the English to mean a specific type of fish, but pronounce it like the working class English and spell it "saumon." 

At some point, the English upper-class decided that salmon was not fit for consumption. So when they stopped eating it they stopped talking about it. But after a few generations they rediscovered salmon, but this time started pronouncing it as their servants did – "SAM-mon." Now people in England and France say "SAM-mon, and the English still spell it "salmon".  American Southerners say it and spell it "SAL-mon". American Northerners pronounce it the way their puritan ancestors did in London's 17th century working class neighborhoods – "SAM-mon" – with or without the Yankee drawl!