Old E
The 'kn- words' in question appear to derive, via Proto-Germanic, from two Indo-European roots, namely *ĝenu- 'knee, angle' (knee) and hypothetical *gen- '± compress; compact, knobby bodies' (knead, knuckle, etc.).
Phonogram kn is found only at the beginning of base words. When we practice the Phonogram Card for kn, we say “/n/, two-letter /n/ used only at the beginning of a word.” This phrase distinguishes kn from the other ways of spelling /n/, such as n and gn.
Why is the letter 'k' silent in 'knock'? Silent letters as in knock, thumb, knight, gnaw, lamb and so on derive from the early Germanic origins of the English language. Where they have made their way into contemporary German and some other allied languages, they are still pronounced.
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.”
However, beginning in the 15th century, during the period of Middle English, speakers gradually stopped pronouncing the 'k'. It is not conclusively known why this occurred.
Like many silent letters, the K was not always silent. In Old English, the word knight was once cniht and knot was once cnotta, and the K sound at the beginning used to be pronounced, up until about the 17th century.
Much like the b/p and d/t sounds (see Section 1), the Mandarin g and k sounds may sometimes sound very similar to you. This is because both are unvoiced in Mandarin, meaning the vocal chords do not vibrate when you say them. This results in a somewhat "softer" g than the English "g" sound.
171: The silent l in the word 'salmon' — Pronuncian: American English Pronunciation.
Etymology. The ⟨kn⟩ and ⟨gn⟩ letter combinations usually indicate a Germanic origin of the word. In Old English, ⟨k⟩ and ⟨g⟩ were not silent when preceding ⟨n⟩. Cognates in other Germanic languages show that the ⟨k⟩ was probably a voiceless velar plosive in Proto-Germanic.
'kn' and 'gn' are consonant digraphs that both sound like 'n'. The k and g are silent.
The silent g: Benign gnomes
'Foreign' is a classic example – the only thing 'foreign' in that word is the 'g'! We don't sound the hard 'guh' sound of the 'g' in these words, but its inclusion does give a slight lengthening of the vowel sound – 'for-reyn'.
The general rule of the silent 'g' is that it's not pronounced following the letter 'n'. For example: 'Gnome, gnaw, campaign, strength, sign, foreign'.
b. Another common silent letter, this time often occurring at the end of the word, for example, comb, lamb, and thumb. Other words with silent 'b' include debt and doubt. She bit the tip of her left thumb, not looking at me.
Answer: The Americans have picked this up from Norman- French. "Herb" is a word that would have been very commonly used by the French, so that is why it would have stuck, as oppose to other words in the American dialect such as "helicopter."
In Britain, H owes its name to the Normans, who brought their letter "hache" with them in 1066. Hache is the source of our word "hatchet": probably because a lower-case H looks a lot like an axe. It has certainly caused a lot of trouble over the years.
解説 'k' is a sound that is present in many languages. However, for the Japanese language, 'k' can be mistaken for 'g' if the voice box in your throat is vibrating when you feel it .
It originated in the Phoenician consonant kap, which was adopted as kappa for GREEK. It reached the Romans via the Etruscans, but was little used in LATIN, in which C and Q were preferred as symbols for the voiceless velar stop /k/.
B. Most silent b's come at the ends of words and just after m: bomb, climb, comb, crumb, dumb, lamb, limb, numb, plumb, thumb, tomb.
The n sound is make by putting the tip of the tongue behind the upper teeth. The combination means the tongue is pretty busy if you say k-nife or k-night, and it's easier to drop the k sound.