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My son, Christopher, has always loved taking new information he has just learned to test me to see if I know it, too.

Often, it turns into a nice discussion about the topic as I reveal that what he has just learned is not new to me. It is fun to see the expression on his face as he grasps a new understanding of things as his mind expands.

Slowly, though, I began to see the whole picture. To give my son an education was to expose my own lapses in knowledge.

In particular, he liked to point out any grammatical errors. If I misspoke, mispronounced something or used a wrong verb tense, my son would announce, "Incorrect grammar."

Take, for instance, the word salmon. Like those around me, I grew up pronouncing the L in salmon.

My mother would fry salmon patties in the frying pan for us. As children, we would take the ketchup (another one of those pesky words) to make smiley faces on top of them before enjoying every bite. I was familiar with the fish and the word.

My son came to me one day wearing a "know-it-all" grin with his dictionary open to show me I was pronouncing salmon wrong. He pointed out that the L was actually silent. His intent probably was innocent enough, though I am sure he derived great pleasure in crushing my ego with his newfound knowledge.

Sometime after this, we found ourselves watching some nature shows on TV, and each had some reference to salmon. Each time, the narrator would pronounce the word with a silent L. It was enough to drive me batty. My teenage son just grinned at me.

I finally had enough. I told him to go get his dictionary. I opened it and found the word salmon. I looked at the pronunciation provided. I looked up the word at the Merriam-Webster Web site.

The site has an audio pronunciation guide, and once again, I heard the word salmon pronounced without the L sound.

With a grin, yet somewhat serious, I proclaimed that in our house, right or wrong, we would be pronouncing the L in salmon.

I took his dictionary and made a few changes, in ink, that reflected how we would be saying this word in our family. He could no longer use his dictionary against me with this word.

Upon further investigation, it appears I am not alone in how I prefer to pronounce the word salmon.

I found an informal poll online that said 86 percent of the people pronounced salmon with a silent L, while the other 14 percent pronounced salmon just as it appears, by sounding out the L.

Apparently, a couple of centuries ago, the word salmon was spelled samoun in the English language. There was no L in the word, and so the word was pronounced as it appeared.

About that time, some people were rallying for words to reflect their Latin origins. Salmon was one of those words. In Latin, the word for fish is salmo, and the L is pronounced. Even though the English word spelling changed from samoun to salmon, the pronunciation stayed the same, making the L silent.

We are allowed to pronounce the L in Salmonella but are not supposed to pronounce the L in the fish, salmon.

No wonder it is said that English is a hard language to master if it is not your native tongue. Even some of us native speaking citizens end up scratching our heads from time to time as we sort out the rules of good speech and spelling.

Nevertheless, I have a hard time changing how I say the word. To say it without pronouncing the L just doesn't sound right. It sounds like a foreign language to me. Salmon will always be served with an L that I pronounce no matter how incorrect my grammar may be in doing so, even if I have to endure my son's laughter in the process.

Linda Vestal is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend living in Gibsonville. Contact her with comments or story ideas at lindavestal@triad.rr.com.