What Are Silent Letters, and Why Do They Exist? (2024)

FAQs

What Are Silent Letters, and Why Do They Exist? ›

Silent letters are letters that don't correlate with any sound when a particular word is spoken. There are silent vowels and silent consonants. Silent letters can help differentiate hom*ophones (words that sound the same but have different spellings). Some silent letters give insight into the origin of a word.

Silent letters can distinguish between hom*ophones, e.g. in/inn; be/bee; lent/leant. This is an aid to readers already familiar with both words. Silent letters may give an insight into the meaning or origin of a word; e.g. vineyard suggests vines more than the phonetic *vinyard would.

Silent letters are letters that are part of a word's proper spelling, but do not make a distinct sound when the word is pronounced. Silent letters exist for a variety of reasons. Some silent letters reflect the meaning of a word, such as the silent 'd' in the word handkerchief.

Silent letters are letters that can't be heard when the word is spoken. For example in the word 'sword', you don't pronounce the letter 'w'. And the letter 'h' is silent in the word 'ghost'. There are lots more examples of words with silent letters in English.

Words usually have silent letters because they used to be pronounced, but were then dropped in speech due to one sound change or another. For example, “know” had its initial “k” in speech as well as in writing until the Great Winds of K-Loss swept in and snatched it from our mouths.

B: If the letter 'b' comes before 't', it is silent. Examples: 'debt', 'doubt', 'subtle'. A similar rule applies if the letter 'b' comes after 'm', like in 'thumb', 'lamb', or 'succumb'. C: 'C' will be silent if it is placed after 's' and before 'i', 'e', or 'y', — muscle, ascent, conscience, scythe.

V is at this point the only letter that refuses to be unheard in any established word of the language.

Nobody did. They were originally pronounced. Over time people stopped saying them and the letters just didn't get removed.

The most common ones are WR, GN, and KN. As a special education teacher, I find that introducing silent letter pairs by sound works well. I usually teach WR first, and then KN and GN together, since they make the same sound. If you're teaching general education, you may find that you're able to progress more quickly.

c, third letter of the alphabet, corresponding to Semitic gimel (which probably derived from an early sign for "camel") and Greek gamma (Γ). A rounded form occurs at Corinth and in the Chalcidic alphabet, and both an angular and a rounded form are found in the early Latin alphabet, as well as in Etruscan.

Which alphabet can never be silent? ›

But as Merriam-Webster Dictionary points out, one unusual letter is never silent: the letter V. While it makes an appearance in words like quiver and vivid, you can rest assured it always behaves the exact same way.

One good way to know if a letter is silent is to memorize the common patterns or rules in a specific language. For example, in English, GH is usually silent (as in “right,” “eight,” or “neighbor”). So is the K in KN (see “knee,” “know,” “knock”).

English has a lot of these, of course, but it's not the only language with silent letters. French has plenty — for instance, parle, parles, and parlent are all pronounced the same. Some other languages have a fair few too.

H is silent in many English words, for various reasons. The words hour and honest come from French, and in these cases English took over the French pronunciation as well as the word. Not all such words that have come into English from French still have a silent h, however.

The word knife starts with a silent /k/ and ends with a silent /e/ because both of those sounds were pronounced at the time the spelling was fixed. The word was pronounced something like “kuh-niffa.” And the written language changes much more slowly than the spoken language.