Magic 'e' Silent 'e'

Read these pair of words out loud: at — ate, us — use, hat — hate, tap — tape, at — ate, mat — mate, sit — site, cap — cape, at — ate, quit — quite, win — wine, hug — huge, envelop — envelope, breath — breathe

> Did you notice the pronunciation of the vowel sound in the second word with the ‘e’ was longer?

When we add an 'e' to the end of a lot of words, especially short vowel sound words, it changes the sound and meaning. It makes the vowel sound long and say its alphabet name: a = “ay," e = “ee," i = “eye," o = “oh," u = “you"

This 'e' is magic! It changes the sound and meaning of words but remains silent.

The magic 'e' silent 'e' is called a marker. That means it doesn't represent a sound but tells us the sounds of the other letters in the word.

It also makes the hard 'g' “guh” sound into a soft ‘g’ “juh” sound, as in hug — huge, rag — rage, wag — wage, stag — stage.

Look at these long vowel sound words: age, alone, date, life, volume, those, twice, marmalade.

Notice the pattern: vowel + consonant + silent e = long vowel sound: age, alone, date, life, volume, those, twice, marmalade

When you add ‘e’ to an end -th, it makes the -the more voiced and the vowel a long vowel sound: breath — breathe, cloth — clothe, bath — bathe, and also loathe, lathe, writhe, seethe, soothe.

(I used to get breath and breathe; and bath and bathe mixed up and didn’t realise the difference until I learnt about the magic ‘e’)

Just one little silent 'e' changes the sound and meaning of a word! That's why it's so important to be careful about adding, or forgetting, the 'e' at the end of words.

We have some exceptions: love, glove, give, above, oven, cover, have, to live, come, some have short vowel sounds. Why?

Because the scholars didn’t like words ending in -v so added an end ‘e’. But these exceptions have exceptions. There’s a long vowel sound in gave, save, clove, live, live wire, alive. 

Come and some were originally spelt cuman and sum (the ‘u’ became an ‘o’ because medieval handwriting was hard to read with u and m together). They eventually changed to the modern spelling.

For more information about this, check out my Reasons Why English Spelling is so Weird and Wonderful ebook).

Listen to the pronunciation of the short and long vowel sounds. Press the player below.