In the English Language, a silent letter refers to a letter or combination of letters that is not pronounced in a word. There are many words that have silent letters. For example, Castle (silent letter 't'), Christmas (silent letter 't'), School (silent letter 'h').
A silent letter is a letter that isn't heard when a particular word is pronounced. Think of the “b” in subtle, the “a” in bread, and the “h,” in ghost. Almost every word in the alphabet plays the role of a silent letter in at least one word.
The silent P: Psychology with no receipt
The 'p', usually a popping sound made at the front of the mouth, is silenced when it precedes an 's'. Most of these words with silent 'p's are to do with the mind or the medicine of the mind: Psychology, psychiatry, psyche, psychological, psychotic or pseudo.
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. Just when one starts to feel comfortable with the relative regularity of these, debt and subtle show up like a couple of toughs.
The letter ⟨k⟩ is normally silent (i.e. it does not reflect any sound) when it precedes an ⟨n⟩ at the beginning of a word, as in “knife”, and sometimes by extension in other positions.
Many students try to pronounce these Ls, but in all these words, the L is completely silent. In walk, chalk, and talk, the L comes after an A, and the vowel is pronounced like a short O. Half and calf have an AL, too, but the vowel is pronounced like the short A in staff.
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.
Even unusual letters like Z and J are silent in words that we have adopted from foreign languages, such as marijuana (originally a Spanish word) and laissez-faire (French). But as Merriam-Webster Dictionary points out, one unusual letter is never silent: the letter V.
As far as we know, this silent F pronunciation of fifth is the only example in English of a word with a silent F.
Have you ever wondered why February has that random, silent first r? Well, February, like the names of most months, has Latin roots. It descended from Februarius, a month in the ancient Roman calendar. The name actually comes from the festival of februum, a purification ritual celebrated during the month.
As The Independent nicely says it, "Silent Letters are the ghosts of pronunciations past." Older versions of these words had pronounced Ns. Most of them come to English from Latin. For example autumn comes from the Latin autumnus and column comes from the Latin columna. In these words, the N was pronounced.
When the letter Y follows a vowel, it is often silent, e.g., day & key. The letter Y can also make the sound as found in word polymer.
But, as a recent article in Reader's Digest points out, nearly every letter in the English language is silent sometimes. There is only one letter in the language that is never silent. Can you guess what it is? The letter is V!
Is the "s" or "c" silent in scent? The answer is: neither is silent. They work together as a digraph in the word scent to create the /s/ sound. Some may argue that the "c" is silent because you only hear the /s/ sound, but because "c" always makes an /s/ sound before an "e," it's not silent in scent.
Also, words with the silent D, grandma and grandpa. Now, with Sandwich, I talked about habit. In the dictionary, it says there is a D sound but that's not our habit anymore. The thing about the D between two consonants is it's really common in our habit to drop that D.
Silent D: The letter D is silent when it comes just before the letters N and G. Examples: Wednesday, pledge, grudge, cadge. The letter D is also not pronounced in the following common words: handsome, handkerchief, sandwich.
There are few rules to identify a word with silent H. Often, words beginning with W. Few examples are why, white, what, when, where. Etc.
The Icelandic alphabet consists of 32 letters. There are also three letters only used for foreign words, and one deleted letter (which is sometimes still used only for foreign words). The Icelandic language uses the latin alphabet, which is the same as the English alphabet and most Western European languages.
The rule is simple: if a word ends in the letters mb, the b is silent. Lets look at some examples. I already told you the word climb. Some others are thumb, comb, crumb, lamb, limb, bomb, and dumb.
The Japanese alphabet consists of 99 sounds formed with 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, and u) and 14 consonants (k, s, t, h, m, y, r, w, g, z, d, b, p, and n), as is shown in the hiragana chart.
The [ʃ] is pronounced with the tongue-tip high against the alveolar ridge behind the teeth. To pronounce [ɕ], keep the tongue-tip low but raise the middle of the tongue, so the air hisses through the gap between the tongue and the roof of the mouth behind the ridge.
If you look through a French dictionary, you will find a lack of the letter 'K. ' That is because it's not a native letter in the French alphabet and is only used on rare occasions.