“Could’’, would’’, ‘’should’’.
Why are these words spelled with an ‘’l’’ in them but the ‘’l’’ is never pronounced?
If I remember correctly: It was indeed pronounced in medieval English, but between 1400 and 1600, the lateral sound (the „l“), if it was following a dark vowel, underwent a gradual lenization - until it disappeared in spoken Standard English around Shakespeare‘s lifetime.
The orthography, however, remained unchanged.
Yet, there are some English dialects in which you can still (lightly) hear the l after a dark vowel 🙂 It’s just amazing how similar Middle English sounded to German - medieval or modern 😄