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Pronunciation · Words with silent letters

How to pronounce “salmon”

SAM-un

2 syllables · stress on “SAM”

SAMun
Britishˈsæmən
Americanˈsæmən

In short

“salmon” is pronounced SAM-un: 2 syllables, with the stress on “SAM”. The l came from Latin salmo when scribes respelled the French saumon. The sound never returned. The second syllable is also a weak schwa, not a full “mon”. The version to avoid is SAL-mon — sounding the l.

Say “salmon” in 3 steps

  1. 1The l is silent: SAM-un, as if it were spelled “sammon”.
  2. 2The first vowel is the /æ/ of “cat”.
  3. 3The second syllable is unstressed and reduces to a schwa — never “MON”.

The version to avoid

Commonly said as: SAL-mon — sounding the l

The l came from Latin salmo when scribes respelled the French saumon. The sound never returned. The second syllable is also a weak schwa, not a full “mon”.

Hear real people say it

Model audio is consistent; real speech is not. Hearing several actual speakers is what makes a word recognisable when someone says it at full speed.

Real speakers

1 human recording

Actual people saying “salmon”, not a synthetic voice. Real speech varies — that variation is what you need to recognise, and what a single model voice cannot show you.

Recordings from Wikimedia Commons by Dvortygirl, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Full credits.

Practise it out loud

Reading about a sound does not change your mouth. Say it, hear it back, and fix one thing at a time.

Say it yourself

0/6 practised

Listen first, then record. You get feedback on the individual sounds, the stress and the rhythm — no account needed, and nothing is stored.

Three speakers per accent

Recordings are used only to generate this feedback and are not stored. Your accent is never penalised: IELTS scores intelligibility, and so do we.

The sounds inside this word

Each links to a full guide with mouth position, audio and drills. If a word keeps failing, the problem is usually one of these.

ss as in seeæa as in catmm as in manəa as in about (schwa)nn as in no

Don't confuse it with…

Minimal pairs isolate the exact contrast this word depends on — the fastest way to train both ear and mouth.

More words with silent letters

Same pattern, same fix. Learning them as a group is far faster than one at a time.

WednesdayWENZ-daysubtleSUT-ulreceiptrih-SEETislandEYE-lunddebtDETpsychologysy-KOL-uh-jee

Keep exploring

Frequently asked questions

How do you pronounce salmon?
salmon is pronounced SAM-un, written /ˈsæmən/ in IPA. The l is silent: SAM-un, as if it were spelled “sammon”.
How many syllables are in salmon?
two: SAM-un. The stress falls on “SAM”.
What is the most common mistake with salmon?
SAL-mon — sounding the l. The l came from Latin salmo when scribes respelled the French saumon. The sound never returned. The second syllable is also a weak schwa, not a full “mon”.

The full sound library

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