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Silent Letter

Silent letters are common in English words, appearing in over 60% of words. While they can cause spelling difficulties, silent letters serve important purposes such as distinguishing between homophones and revealing the historical origins of words. Understanding the reasons for silent letters, such as their presence in words derived from Viking, Latin, and other languages, can improve spelling and build confidence. Rules and patterns exist but have exceptions, so learning individual words remains important.

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Monk Dhariwal
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266 views4 pages

Silent Letter

Silent letters are common in English words, appearing in over 60% of words. While they can cause spelling difficulties, silent letters serve important purposes such as distinguishing between homophones and revealing the historical origins of words. Understanding the reasons for silent letters, such as their presence in words derived from Viking, Latin, and other languages, can improve spelling and build confidence. Rules and patterns exist but have exceptions, so learning individual words remains important.

Uploaded by

Monk Dhariwal
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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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 became silent 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

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 in words, 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.

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' silent 'w' before 'r' silent 'g' before 'n' silent 'p' before 's' knee write gnash psalm know wrist gnat psychic knuckle wrong gnaw psychology knock wrap gnarl psychiatry

Some words have silent letters in the middle or at the end. 'l' is often before 'k' b is often silent after m n is often silent after m t is often silent after s folk plumber column 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.

Spelling test answers below


Try the Silent 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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