A silent letter—a term used informally in English pronunciation—is a letter or letter combination of the alphabet that is frequently not uttered in a word. The b in subtle, the c in scissors, the g in design, the t in listen, and the gh in thinking are all examples.

Silent letters can be found in a lot of words. “Roughly 60% of words in English have a silent letter in them,” according to Ursula Dubosarsky, author of The Word Snoop (Dubosarsky 2008). Continue reading to learn about the many sorts of silent letters and how they affect pronunciation and language development in English.

The Origin of Silent Letters

So, where did the silent letters originate? They are Classical period relics, according to author Ned Halley. “As the Classical world’s influence grew stronger in the 15th century, English scholars wanted to remind their readers that the majority of the language’s vocabulary came from Latin and Greek. They added the b to show off their understanding of doubt, which was then written ‘dout’ because it came into medieval English via French doute and was derived initially from Latin dubitare. It was a nationalistic act in a sense, reasserting English’s Classical beginnings over the Dutch, French, German, and Norse influences of the millennium since Roman dominance diminished in Britain in the fifth century and Anglo-Saxon languages began to invade.”

Ursula Dubosarsky also has some thoughts on how silent letters have evolved: “Another thing to keep in mind is that many of today’s silent letters were not always silent. The word knight, for example, was once pronounced with the k and the gh sounded out (ke-nee-g-hht), as were many silent e’s and l’s in English.

What does the silent ‘b’ at the end of English words mean?

THE SILENT ‘b’ is due to our forefathers pronouncing a b-sound centuries ago: climb was Old English climban, and bomb was Italian bomba. By 1300, the b-sound had vanished. It does, however, leave traces to this day in pairs like climb-clamber and crumb-crumble. Thumb appears to be an exception, because the ‘b’ isn’t etymological; thimble may have had an influence. There are around 20 terms throughout the book that end in ‘mb.’ People sometimes pronounce a b-sound in some of the rarer ones, such as lamb or coulomb. ‘B,’ like ‘d,’ and ‘g,’ is a voiced plosive on the phonetic scale.

Sound alterations that affect one of the three are likely to affect the other two as well. This is true for those of us who pronounce no g-sound after the nasal at the end of sing and hang, but not for people in the Midwest and North who pronounce singer as finger. However, the letter ‘d’ is retained in the conventional pronunciation of mind, stand, and round (perhaps because the ‘nd’ sequence of sounds is required to distinguish the past tense from the present in fined, tanned, and crowned). Even so, in sentences like mind the doors, stand back, and round the corner, we frequently omit the ‘d’ in speech.

Rules:

Words with Silent B

Rule 1: At the end of a word, B is not pronounced.

leg, crumb, dumb, comb, bomb, thumb, climb, tomb are some examples.

Rule 2: At the end of a root word, B is usually not pronounced before T.

debt, doubt, debtor, doubtful, subtle, subtlety, subtleness

A root word is the original word without any prefixes or suffixes, for example, doubt is the root word in doubtful, and the suffix ‘ful’ is a suffix. The main word is subtle, and the suffix ‘ness’ is a prefix.

Silent Letters Come in a Variety of Forms

A Survey of English Spelling author Edward Carney divides silent letters into two categories: auxiliary and dummy. He divides the two groupings into the following categories.

Auxiliary Letters

Auxiliary letters are part of a set of letters that spell a sound that isn’t represented by a single letter. As an example,

There’s /th/ thing /th/ there /sh/ share /zh/ treasure /ng/ song.” “

Dummy Letters

“There are two types of dummy letters: inactive letters and empty letters.

Inert letters are letters that are sometimes heard and sometimes not heard in a word segment. As an example,

resignation (g is not heard)

withdrawal (g is heard)

heinous (g is not heard)

(There is a g heard).”

“Like auxiliary letters and inactive letters, empty letters have no purpose. The letter u in the word gauge, for example, is blank. Silent consonants can be found in the following words:

d: bridge, ledge, edge c: indict ch: yacht

g: sign, design, assign, foreign

h: spaghetti, rhinoceros

knuckle, knee, knit, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob

m: mnemonic n: autumn, column l: calf, talk, could, should, would m: mnemonic

p: raspberry, receipt

t: castle, whistle

w: “answer,” “wrap,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “w (Carney 1994).

Silent letters are more difficult to predict than empty letters in new words. “There are no standards that we can apply to words with empty letters[;] you just have to use them and remember their spelling,” Strausser and Paniza, authors of Painless English for Speakers of Other Languages, say. (Strausser and Paniza 2007, for example).

In the spelling sequences mb and bt, the letter b is always silent in the word-final position: comb, numb, bomb, limb, debt…

In the spelling sequence dj: adjective, adjunct, neighboring…, the letter d is always silent.

In the spelling sequence gm or gn, the letter g is silent: phlegm, gnarl, champagne, sign, gnat, gnaw…

In the spelling sequence gh and in the word-final position: ghost, ghetto, aghast, ghastly, ah, eh, oh… h is silent in the spelling sequence gh and in the word-final position: ghost, ghetto, aghast, ghastly, ah, eh, oh…

In the word-initial spelling sequence kn, the letter k is always silent: kneel, knee, knob, knight, knave, knowledge, knife, knock,” (Sadanand and colleagues, 2004).

Conclusion

Once you understand the rules, most languages that use phonetic alphabets are rather simple to read and pronounce. Simply put, you speak what you see. Some languages, such as English and French, do, nevertheless, utilize a lot of silent letters. This is a list of letters that have been written but not spoken. These letters are frequently left over from when the term was pronounced differently than it is now. Silent letters can be mastered by understanding the laws of the language and remembering typical silent letter words. You can seek up the pronunciation or ask a native speaker if you’re still unsure whether a letter in a word is silent.