Silent Letter

7/29/2019 Silent Letter

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Silent letters are the letters in words that are not pronounced but make a

huge difference to the meaning and sometimes the pronunciation of the

whole word.

Most of these silent letters were pronounced for centuries then they becamesilent but the spelling was already fixed with these spellings, and now they

show the history of the word.

The bad news is that more than 60% of English words have silent letters in

them which can cause all sorts of problems with spelling the word or looking

for it in a dictionary.

The good news is there are some rules about what letters are silent before

or after certain letters ( but like all English spelling rules there are

exceptions to the rule).

Silent letters aren't there to mess with your brain - honest. They're there for

various reasons and so identifying and understanding them will definitely

help your spelling, writing and confidence.

1. They help the reader to distinguish between homophones (homophones

have the Same sound but different meaning and different spelling and there

are loads of these nightmare words in English) in/inn, be/bee,to/too/two,

know/no, whole/hole, knot/not,

2. A silent letter can help us work out the meaning of the word and it also

can change the pronunciation even though it's silent - sin/sign, rat/rate

3. Magic 'e' - if you add 'e' at the end of short vowel sound words it

elongates the sound - rid/ride, cop/cope, hat/hate, tap/tape, at/ate,

mat/mate, ( check out my magic 'e' video - click here).

4. Sometimes people might pronounce certain letters or they might not

depending on their accent, for example the t in 'often' can be pronounced or

not.

5. H is silent in a lot of accents. For me h is a difficult letter to pronounce

because I grew up dropping the hand my muscle memory doesn't like it at
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all! But the H is silent in some words from French - hour, honest, honour,

heir, herb (in American)

6. They show the origins and history (etymology) of a word.

One way to start to love spelling and improve it is to take an interest inwords, to discover the logic in the spelling system and to understand the

background and history of words, and this especially true for learning silent

letters.

Do you know why there are silent letters in these words?.

1. What's the origin of words with the silent k and g? Knife, knock, know,

knee, gnat, gnaw?

2. Why is there a silent b in plumber?

3. Why are there silent letters in doubt, debt, receipt?

4. What's the origin of the words with the silent 'gh' like daughter, night,

light, bright, dough, bough (branch of a tree) and why is 'gh' in cough and

enough pronounced with a 'f'?

5. Why is there a silent s in island?

Answers.

1. Knife, knock, know, gnat, gnaw are all Viking words which used to be

pronounced but we leave the letters in there to see the origin and history of

the word (in Sweden they still say the silent letter in knife kneefe)

2. Plumber is a Roman/Latin word from the Roman for lead pipe - plum bum.

3. 16th century academics messed around with our spelling by wanting to

make it more Latin and so added letters to words like debt, doubt and

island.

4. That difficult -gh- letter pattern is from the Anglo- Saxons - daughter,

night, cough, dough, bright... the -gh- used to be -h- and pronounced like

the Scottish loch, a hard sound - until the French invaded and messed

around with our spelling and added the g. Then the -gh- became silent or

pronounced with a 'f' sound.


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Fnd out more in my ebook - The Reasons Why English Spelling is so Weird

and Wonderful.

Please click here for more info that'll change the way you think about

spelling and improve it.

There are some rules about what letters are silent before or after certain

letters ( but like all English spelling rules there are exceptions to the rule).

silent 'k' before 'n' knee know knuckle knock

silent 'w' before 'r' write wrist wrong wrap

silent 'g' before 'n' gnash gnat gnaw gnarl

silent 'p' before 's' psalm psychic psychology psychiatry

Some words have silent letters in the middle or at the end.

'l' is often before 'k' folk

b is often silent after m plumber

n is often silent after m column

t is often silent after s listen

Do a spelling test of some important words with silent letters in

them. There are 18 key words.Click here to do the spelling test.
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Spelling test answers below

Try theSilent Letter Quiz

Spelling test answers

1. Wednesday

2. autumn

3. sign

4. night

5. building

6. guess

7. white

8. listen

9. knock

10. know

11. thumb

12. doubt

13. talk

14. walk

15. half

16. write

17. wrinkle

18. wrong

Spelling Lessons for Adults
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Silent Letter

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