Silent letter
In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign. Null is an unpronounced or unwritten segment. The symbol resembles the Scandinavian letter Ø and other symbols.
English
One of the noted difficulties of English spelling is a high number of silent letters. Edward Carney distinguishes different kinds of "silent" letters, which present differing degrees of difficulty to readers.- Auxiliary letters which, with another letter, constitute digraphs, i.e. two letters combined which represent a single phoneme. These may further be categorized as:
- * "Exocentric" digraphs, where the sound of the digraph is different from that of either of its constituent letters. These are rarely considered "silent". Examples:
- ** Where the phoneme has no standard single-letter representation, as with consonants for as in sing, for as in thin or as in then, diphthongs in out or in point. These are the default spellings for the relevant sounds and present no special difficulty for readers or writers.
- ** Where standard single-letter representation uses another letter, as with in enough or in physical instead of. These may be considered irregular for writers, but less difficult for readers.
- * "Endocentric" digraphs, where the sound of the digraph is the same as that of one of its constituent letters. These include:
- ** Most double consonants, as in clubbed; though not geminate consonants, as in misspell. Doubling due to suffixation or inflection is regular; otherwise, it may present difficulty to writers, but not to readers.
- ** Many vowel digraphs, as,, in leave, achieve, eulogy.
- ** The discontiguous digraphs, whose second element is "magic e", e.g. in rate, in fine. This is the regular way to represent "long" vowels in the last syllable of a morpheme.
- ** Others, such as , as in guard, vogue; as in bread, heavy, etc.;, as in aerial, oedipal. These may be difficult for writers and sometimes also for readers.
- Dummy letters with no relation to neighboring letters and no correspondence in pronunciation:
- * Some are inert letters, which are sounded in a cognate word: e.g. in damn ; in phlegm ; in practically. If the cognate is obvious, it may aid writers in spelling, but mislead readers in pronunciation.
- * The rest are empty letters, which never have a sound, e.g., in honor, in answer, in Sarah, in island, in subtle, the in ballet. These may present the greatest difficulty to writers and often to readers, as well.
Not all silent letters are completely redundant:
- Silent letters can distinguish between homophones, e.g. in/inn; be/bee; lent/leant. This is an aid to readers already familiar with both words.
- Silent letters may give an insight into the meaning or origin of a word; e.g. vineyard suggests vines more than the phonetic *vinyard would.
- Silent letters may help to put weight on a certain syllable, telling the reader to put more stress on the syllable. The final in giraffe gives a clue to the second-syllable stress, where *giraf might suggest initial-stress.
- Sound changes occurring without a spelling change. The digraph was pronounced in Middle English in such words as light.
- Sound distinctions from foreign languages may be lost, as with the distinction between smooth rho and roughly aspirated rho in Ancient Greek, represented by and in Latin, but merged to the same in English.
- Clusters of consonants may be simplified, producing silent letters; e.g. silent in asthma, silent in Christmas. Similarly, with alien clusters, such as Greek initial in psychology and in mnemonic, and the much rarer clusters in chthonic and phthalate.
- Compound words are often simplified in pronunciation, while their spelling remains the same. For example, cupboard and breakfast were once pronounced as written, but were then simplified over time. The words forehead and waistcoat have largely reverted to their spelling pronunciations, but were once pronounced *forrid and *weskit, respectively.
- Occasionally, spurious letters are consciously inserted in spelling to reflect etymology. The in debt and doubt was inserted to match Latin cognates like debit and dubitable. A silent was inserted in isle and then extended to the unrelated word island. The in ptarmigan was apparently suggested by Greek words such as pteron.
Differences between British English and American English
Pronunciation
In the US, the h in herb is silent, but in the UK, it is pronounced. The same is true for the l in solder.In parts of the UK, the a in dictionary and secretary is silent, but in the US, it is pronounced.
Spelling
In US spellings, silent letters are sometimes omitted, but not always. In most words, silent letters are written in both styles.Other Germanic languages
Danish
The Danish language has two different letters that can be silent.The letter is silent in most dialects if followed by, as in hvad, hvem, hvor.
The letter is usually silent if preceded by a consonant, as in en mand, blind. Many words ending in are pronounced with a stød, but it is still considered a silent letter.
Faroese
The Faroese language has two silent letters.The letter edd is almost always silent. It is rendered in orthography for historical reasons. In some cases, however, the letter edd is pronounced, as in veðrið 'the weather'.
The letter ge is usually silent between vowels or when following a vowel before a pause. Use of the silent letter ge in Faroese is the same as for the letter edd - it is written for historical reasons as Faroese orthography was based on normalised spelling of Old Norse and Icelandic language.
Both Faroese silent letters edd and ge are replaced by a hiatus glide consonant when followed by another vowel.
German
In German, silent letters are extremely rare and occur usually in loanwords, rather than German words.The long sound is sometimes written, with a silent, as in Wien or in the verb ending .In some words of foreign origin, the after is pronounced, e.g. Ambiente, Bakterien, Hygiene, Klient, Spermien, but is silent in e.g. Kurier, Papier, Turnier and all the -ieren verbs already mentioned. In Zeremonie, the final is usually silent but always pronounced in its plural form Zeremonien.
Words ending in can be somewhat tricky to learners:
For example, the final is pronounced in the words Akazie, Aktie, Aktinie, Begonie, Familie, Folie, Geranie, Grazie, Hortensie, Hostie, Immobilie, Kastanie, Komödie, Kurie, Lilie, Linie, Orgie, Pinie, Serie, Studie, Tragödie,
while it is silent in the words Akademie, Allergie, Amnesie, Amnestie, Apathie, Artillerie, Batterie,Blasphemie, Chemie, Chirurgie, Demokratie, Energie, Epidemie, -gamie, Garantie, Genie, Geometrie, -grafie/-graphie, Harmonie, Hysterie, Infanterie, Ironie, Kavallerie, Knie, Kompanie, Kopie, ', Liturgie, Magie, Manie, Melodie, Monotonie, Nostalgie, Orthopädie, Partie, Phantasie, Philantropie, Philatelie, Philosophie, Poesie, Psychiatrie, Rhapsodie, Sinfonie, -skopie, Theorie, Therapie, Utopie.
In the female names Amalie, Emilie, Otilie, Zäzilie, the final e is pronounced, but it is silent in Leonie, Marie, Natalie, Rosalie, Rosemarie, Stefanie, Valerie.
The e is pronounced in the names Ariel, Daniel,Daniela, Gabriel, Gabriele, Gabriella, Mariele, Mariella, Muriel,, but it is silent in Dieter, Frieda, Friederich, Siegfried, Siegrid, Sieglinde, Wieland.
In country names ending in -ien, the e is pronounced: Australien, Brasilien, Indien, Kroatien, Serbien, Slowenien.
In city names, the pronunciation of e after i varies: In Wien, the e is silent, but in Trie'st'', it is pronounced.A silent h sometimes indicates vowel length, as in Stuhl, or a hiatus, as in drehen. That h derives from an old in some words such as sehen zehn, but in other words, it has no etymological justification such as gehen or mahlen.
Romance languages
French
Silent letters are common in French, including the last letter of most words. Ignoring auxiliary letters that create digraphs, they include almost every possible letter except and.Vowels
Final is silent or at least a nearly-silent schwa ; it allows the preservation of a preceding consonant, often allowing the preservation of a grammatical distinction between masculine and feminine forms in writing, e.g., in vert and verte ; the is pronounced in the latter but not the former. Furthermore, the schwa can prevent an awkward ending of a word ending in a consonant and a liquid.After,, or, a final is silent. The spelling is pronounced just the same as that for and is entirely an etymological distinction, so in that context, the is silent.
After or, is almost always silent.
Consonants
In most dialects, the letter is almost always silent, except in the digraphs and. However, in some words, an initial letter marks an audible hiatus that prevents liaison, cf. words starting with an aspirated h. Numerous doubled consonants exist; French does not distinguish doubled consonants from single consonants in pronunciation as Italian does. A marked distinction exists between a single and doubled : doubled is always voiceless, while an intervocalic single is voiced.The nasal consonants and when final or preceding a consonant ordinarily nasalize a preceding vowel but are not themselves pronounced. Initial and intervocalic and, even before a final silent, are pronounced: aimer, jaune.
Most final consonants are silent, usual exceptions to be found with the letters,,, and . But even this rule has its exceptions: final is usually pronounced /e/ rather than the expected /ɛʀ/. Final is silent after even in a diphthong. Final -ent is silent as a third-person plural verb ending, though it is pronounced in other cases.
Final consonants that might be silent in other contexts may seem to reappear in pronunciation in liaison: ils ont "they have", as opposed to ils sont "they are"; liaison is the retention of a historical sound otherwise lost, and often has grammatical or lexical significance.
Italian
The letter most often marks a / as hard, as in spaghetti, where it would otherwise be soft, as in cello, because of a following front vowel. Conversely, a silent marks a / as soft where it would otherwise be hard because of a following back vowel, as in ciao, Perugia.Silent is also used in forms of the verb avere – ho, hai and hanno – to distinguish these from their homophones o, ai and anno. The letter is also silent at the beginning of words borrowed from other languages, such as hotel.
Spanish
Despite being rather phonemic, Spanish orthography retains some silent letters:- is silent outside of the digraph and loanwords such as hámster or .
- The digraph, used to represent before the front vowels and, has a silent
- for has the same silent before and. When the is not silent it must be marked with a trema:. Before and, the is not silent.
Greek
Slavic languages
Czech
In the vast majority of cases, Czech pronunciation follows the spelling rather closely. There are only three exceptions:/j/ + consonant clusters in some words
In most present forms of the verb být, namely jsem, jsi, jsme, jste and jsou, the initial cluster /js/ is regularly simplified to a mere /s/. This pronunciation is considered correct and neutral when the verb is unstressed and used as an auxiliary. When stressed or used lexically, only the full /js/ pronunciation is considered correct. In casual speech, however, a few other highly frequent words commonly undergo similar simplification, namely all present forms of jít beginning with /jd/, the noun jméno and the verb jmenovat call.Russian
Several words in Russian omit written consonants when spoken. For example, "чувствовать" is pronounced and "солнце" is pronounced .Russian letter ъ has no phonetic value and functions as a separation sign. Before the spelling reform of 1918 this hard sign was written at the end of each word when following a non-palatal consonant.
Semitic languages
In Hebrew language, almost all cases of silent letters are silent aleph – א. Many words that have a silent aleph in Hebrew, have an equivalent word in Arabic language, that is written with a mater lectionis alif –ا ; a letter that indicates the long vowel "aa". Examples:- The Hebrew word for "no" is לֹא and the Arabic word for "no" is لاَ.
- The Hebrew word for "left side" is שְׂמֹאל and the Arabic word for "north" is شَمَال.
- The Hebrew word for "head" is רֹאשׁ and the Arabic word for "head" is رَأس.
The silent Arabic alif is marked with a wasla sign above it, in order to differentiate it from the other kinds of alifs. An Arabic alif turns silent, if it fulfils three conditions: it must be in a beginning of a word, the word must not be the first one of the sentence, and the word must belong to one of the following groups:
- Verbs that start with the prefix "ʔi", due to their conjugation and derived stem.
- Ten specific nouns that begin with "ʔ":اسم, است, ابن/ابنة, اثنان/اثنتان, امرؤ/امرأة, اَيمن الله/اَيْم الله. Some of these words have a Hebrew word equivalent, and that equivalent had totally lost the beginning aleph. Examples: اسم, meaning "a name", sounds like "ism" if it is in the beginning of the sentence and "sm" if not; its Hebrew equivalent is שֵׁם. إبن , meaning "a son", sounds like "ibn" if it is in the beginning of the sentence and "bn" if not; its Hebrew equivalent is בֵּן, in Maltese bin.
- The alif of the word اَل, meaning "the" - sounds like "al" if it is in the beginning of the sentence and "l" if not.
In Maltese għ can be silent e.g. għar - meaning cave - and pronounced "ahr", or a voiced HH if it is followed by the or if it is at the end of a word e.g. qlugħ.
Uralic languages
The Estonian and Finnish languages use double letters for long vowels and geminate consonants.Turkish
In the Turkish language, often has no sound of its own, but lengthens the preceding vowel, for example in dağ . In other surroundings, it may be pronounced as a glide.Indic languages
Unconventional to Sanskrit and Proto-Indo-European root languages, some Indic languages have silent letters. Among Dravidian languages, Tamil and Malayalam have certain distinct styles of keeping few of their letters silent.Tamil
is a classical language phonetically characterized by allophones, approximants, nasals and glottalised sounds. Some words, however, have silent letters in them. The words அஃது, and அஃதன் contain the Āytam or 'ஃ', which is not pronounced in Modern Tamil. It is explained in the Tolkāppiyam that āytam could have the glottalised the sounds it was combined with, though some may argue it sounded more like the Arabic 'خ'. That being said, modern words like ஆஃபிஸ் use 'ஃ' and 'ப' in sequence to represent the sound, as the āytam is nowadays also used to transcribe it and other foreign phonemes.Another convention in Middle Tamil is the use of silent vowels to address a mark of respect when beginning proper nouns. The Ramayana was one such text where the word Ramayana in Tamil always began with 'இ', as in இராமாயணம், though it was not pronounced. The name கோபாலன் was so written as உகோபாலன் prefixed with an 'உ'.
Malayalam
is a Sanskritized language in which speakers always pronounce all letters. The only known exception for consonants in the language is നന്ദി, where 'ദ' is never pronounced.Inheriting elision, approximants and allophones from Tamil, in Malayalam, except for Sanskrit words, words ending in the vowel 'ഉ' become silent at the end and if not compounded with words succeeding them, replace the 'ഉ' vowel by the schwa. However, it is considered disrespectful to change this pronunciation in the simple present verbs, when using imperatives and using what can be termed as Imperative-Active voice in Malayalam, where the second person is respectfully addressed with his or her name instead of നീ or നിങ്ങൽ. For example, in the sentence, രാകേശ് പണി തീർക്കു, the use of the second personal pronoun is avoided with the name രാകേശ്, but this sentence sounds less respectful if the 'ഉ' in തീർക്കു (, finish
Zhuang-Tai languages
Thai
has a deep orthography like English and French. Unlike the two languages, however, the Thai script is an abugida rather than a true alphabet. Nonetheless, silent consonants, vowels, and even syllables are common in Thai. Thai has many loanwords from Sanskrit and Pali, and rather than spell aforementioned words according to Thai phonics, the script tends to maintain the etymological spellings. For example, the word ประโยชน์ would be spelled in romanization as prayochṅ, but it would be pronounced as prayot, where the extra letter for -n is completely silent. Also, the Thai word มนตร์ is written as mantra like it would be in Sanskrit, but it is only pronounced mon in Thai. Though the second syllable is pronounced in Sanskrit, it is completely absent when pronouncing the word in Thai.Also, different letters can be used for the same sound depending on which class the consonant is, which is important for knowing which tone the syllable will have, and whether or not it is a loanword from Sanskrit or Pali. However, some letters written before low class consonants become silent and turn the low class syllable into a high class one. For example, even though the high class letter ho hip ห is used to write the sound /h/, if the letter comes before a low class letter in a syllable, the letter will become ho nam, which will make the letter silent and it will turn the syllable into a high class syllable. For example, the word นา is a low class syllable because its initial consonant is a low class consonant. The syllable is pronounced nā: and it means "field". However, the word หนา is a high class syllable, despite it containing a low class consonant in the onset. The syllable is pronounced nǎ: and it means "thick".