For all my life, I swear that I’ve heard the ‘l’ pronounced in the words ‘folk’ and ‘yolk’. A friend of mine just recently disagreed with me, and the dictionary proved her right.
Could it be a regional thing (I was raised most of my life in the DC/MD area), or am I just plain wrong?
I hear people do it all the time and it perplexes me. I assume it’s out of ignorance (like pronouncing the “t” in “often”) … and I secretly suspect people who do it think that it’s more proper than leaving it silent.
I’ve never heard anyone pronounce the “L” in these words, to the best of my recollection. I’ve lived in the Northeast, West Coast and currently the Southeast US.
There are regional accents that elide it – not /folk/ but /fo[sup]l[/sup]k/
I grew up where the white liquid substance derived from cows was /me[sup]l[/sup]k/, pronounced almost as the first syllable in mechanism, but with a hint of an L present.
While that area had a clear /l/ in “yolk,” hearing it pronounced as a homonym to yoke was not uncommon.
I’ve never heard it, and I’ve lived in Ohio and NYC.
Just curious: do these people also pronounce the “l” in “walk” or “talk”?
I’ve always pronounced the L. I’ve lived in Oklahoma all my life. This is the first time I’ve heard or read that the L’s were silent.
So you’re saying I should pronounce them “Foke” and “Yoke”? That sounds more hick than my accent.
Oh, and I know the “t” in often is silent.
I’ve always pronounced the l in both of those words. Yolk is not a homonym for yoke, at least not in these parts. We listen to folk music, not foke music. Maybe it’s because my fokes are from the South and MidWest…
Yes. The pronunciation guides for yolk and folk don’t even give an option otherwise. It’s always yōk and fōk.
Are you saying that you’re worried you’ll sound like a yokel? 
I hear more of an “l” in folk than I do in yolk, especially when in a term like folk music. The latter is a homonym with yoke. Lifelong northeasterner.
Born and bred in New England. I’ve got yolk and yoke, folk and foke as homophones. Actually, I think I pronounce the latters with vowels a bit tenser.
Slight hijack: Merriam Webster disagrees with you that the “t” must be silent in “often.”
Count me in as someone who always heard the L in both words, along with the T in “often”, among my peers growing up. My emotional (and largely incorrect) assumption when I hear people that don’t use the L or the T is that they must be ignorant.
Dialects vary, standards vary, and people should accept that.
I don’t pronounce the L in yoLk, but I don’t pronounce it ‘yoke’, either. It’s kinda like the 'l" is 1/2 the way in there.
I hear the difference in others too.
I was born in KY, grew up in SE IN, and am now in NE FL.
I and everyone in my family (and most of the people I know) have always pronounced the Ls in folk and yolk. It’s a fully-developed L for my family’s dialect, and various ranges of elision for the rest of 'em, but it’s almost always there.
I tend to think of foke and yoke as hickish, as in
So, if the dictionary’s trying to be descriptive, then it’s failing. I can’t imagine that I live in the only pocket of L-speakers in the English-speaking world.
From Houston, another pronouncer and hearer of the "L"s in those words. Yoke and yolk don’t rhyme, dammit! There’s a dark L (like in the Slavic languages) after the “o”. One of the executives at my company is from somewhere in the deep south, with a very upper-class southern accent, and he says “fokes” and “yoke”, and it’s very noticeable and almost jarring when one is used to everybody pronouncing those words with the “L”.
Of course, I can’t form a decent plural, so maybe I’m not one to have an opinion.
This side the pond, yolk rhymes with yoke and folk rhymes with yolk. As for “often”, it’s almost invariably pronounced with the “t”, but 'twasn’t ever thus; there’s a gag in The Pirates of Penzance between the Major-General and the Pirate King which relies on this…
Of course there is a hint of an 'L" in both folk and yolk----------at least for those of us who don’t want to consciously say “bad things” —or be unclear as to meaning.
Take away the slight “L” from folk and it can be a little disturbing to some listeners ----“You got any folk?”—might get a slap in the face.
–Take away the slight “L” from yolk and you are dealing with how we tend to treat some animals.
I’m from SE Michigan, and I’ve always heard folk as fo[sup]l[/sup]k.
Yolk as yoke.
Talk as tawk.
walk as wauk (but sometimes… just sometimes, I swear can hear the “l” coming through.)
The only one that always sounds horrible to my ears is balk. When I say it correctly, I feel like I’m imitating a chicken. So I usually avoid the word altogether.
Must have been a real easy delivery.
Sorry.