The -all, -alk and -alt families

After a, the letter l changes the vowel to /ɔː/ — and in -alk and -alm the l goes silent as well.

Glued and welded sounds

-all -alk -alt -alm FAMILY_ALL_01

Word-family rule · High reliability · Common · Early · Reading

• /ɔːl/ -all: ball, call, small
• /ɔːk/ -alk, l silent: walk, talk, chalk
• /ɔːlt/ -alt: salt, halt
• /ɑːm/ -alm, l silent: calm, palm

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 5: Glued Sounds & Spelling Basics · Skill 11: Advanced Patterns & Silent Letters

Child explanation

Ball does not rhyme with pal. When a comes before l, the a changes. And in walk and calm, the l goes quiet too.

The rule

A followed by l is not short a. In -all and -alt the vowel becomes /ɔː/ and the l is pronounced. In -alk and -alm the vowel changes and the l falls silent.

What is really going on

Pre-l vowel backing, a regular Middle English change. Whether the l survives in pronunciation depends on what follows: it is kept before a vowel or t, and lost before k, m and f. That conditioning is real, which is why silent l is a narrow rule rather than a general one.

Position in the word

• End of a word — The rime of the word. For example: ball, walk, salt, calm.

Examples

Easy examples

ball, call, walk, talk, small

More examples

tall, wall, fall, hall, stall, chalk, stalk, salt, halt, also, always, almost

Advanced examples

calm, palm, balm, half, calf, folk, yolk

Pseudo-words

Made-up words that follow the rule. A child who reads these has the pattern rather than the vocabulary.

brall, shalk, pralt

Exceptions

• shall and pal: shall, pal, Sally, alley. Short a despite the l — shall is a high-frequency exception.

Contrast pairs

• pal versus ball — One l versus two — and a completely different vowel.
• talk versus milk — Silent l versus pronounced l — the pair that stops the over-generalisation.
• call versus walk — l pronounced versus l silent.

Teacher note

Teach -all first as a rime family, and only later introduce -alk with its silent l. Pair it immediately with milk and silk so the child sees from the start that the l is not silent merely because a consonant follows — that over-generalisation is the single most common error this pattern produces.

Learn these first

• The five short vowels — a e i o u in a closed syllable — A single vowel with a consonant after it and nothing else is usually short. This is the rule that makes CVC words decodable.

Related rules

• Silent L in selected word families — alk / alm / alf / olk — L is silent in a small set of established families — walk, calm, half, folk — and in almost nothing else. Milk, silk, help and salt all keep their l.
• AW — aw — The end-of-word partner to au. Saw, draw, law, crawl — reliable for /ɔː/.
• AU — au — The /ɔː/ of haul and sauce, used inside a word. Pairs with aw, which does the same job at the end.
• The letter A — a — Five pronunciations, decided by what follows: a consonant, a silent e, an r, an l, or nothing much at all.

• Previous in Glued and welded sounds: The -old, -ild, -ind and -ost families — -old -ild -ind -ost -olt — Closed syllables with a long vowel. Cold, child, find and most all break the short-vowel rule, and they are common enough to be taught as a set.
• All reading rules

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