Beware of Silent Letters in English

Today’s English
March 28th, 2017

Pronunciation and stress are important to spoken English as spelling and punctuation are to written English.  Silent Letters pose a great challenge to the foreign learners of English. There is no one-to-one correspondence between how a word is written and how it is pronounced. For instance, the word “queue" has five letters but we read only one “q" and the remaining are silent.  Here arises a logical question – why should we write those four silent letters, if we are not at all to read?

Reason 1 : Great Vowel Shift
The changes in the pronunciation of English language between 1350 and 1600 is known as Great Vowel Shift that resulted in standardisation of English spellings, especially in changing long vowels in middle English into diphthongs in modern English. For example, the word bite was pronounced as beet in middle English and now with diphthong sound. If you remove the silent “e", how will you differentiate bite from bit? Here the placement of Silent letter seems essential. Compare also – fat, fate and hat, hate.

Reason 2: English, a Borrower
English is a thief that has stolen many words from almost all languages globally to make itself rich – 29% of words from Latin, 29% from French, 26% from Germanic languages, 6% from Greek and the remaining from other languages. If they buy back, English won’t exist. For example, the word “tsunami” is from Japanese and psychology from Greek. The initial silent letters (t, p) take birth when these words enter English language.

Reason 3: Arrival of Printing press
When German Johannes Gutenberg invented printing press and introduced in England by William Caxton in 1476, nobody knew that printers would become the sole authority of English spellings and the money minded among them would add many silent letters to fill their purse. (You know, each letter added by them added money).

Beware of the silent letters that may drag you into mire.

1. A silent in – musically, romantically, artistically
2. B silent -  thumb, dumb, climb, lamb, debt, doubt, subtle
3. C silent – acquire, muscle, scissors, disciple, scene, scent
4. D silent – sandwich, Wednesday, handkerchief, handsome, bridge, edge
5. E silent – hate, fate, name, fame, like, bike, European
6. F silent – halfpenny, halfpence
7. G silent – foreign, sign, align, design, gnome, gnarl, guide
8. H silent – hour, honest, ghost, heir, what, when, chorus, echo, rhythm
9. I silent -   business, friend
10. J silent -  marijuana
11. K silent – knife, knowledge, knight, knot, knock, know, knave, knob
12. L silent – calm, talk, walk, half, would, should, salmon, folk
13. M silent – mnemonic
14. N silent – Autumn, hymn, column, condemn, solemn
15. O silent – colonel, leopard, people
16. P silent – psalm, psychology, receipt, pneumonia, corps, pseudonym
17. Q silent- lacquer
18. R silent –  forgo, darkness, work, winter, certain, heart, surf, world
19. S silent -  island, aisle
20. T silent – castle, listen, often, hasten, fasten
21. U silent – guess, guard, guide, guitar, tongue, guilt, colleague
22. V silent – leveson
23. W silent – answer, sword, two, wrist, wrong, whole, write, who
24. X silent – faux, sioux
25. Y silent – key, pepys
26. Z silent – chez, laissez-faire, rendezvous

Though we have to be cautious of silent letters, we agree with what Confucius says, “Silence is a true friend who never betrays.”