Silent Letters
How many silent letters are there in English? 20%, 60%, 80%
knee, knock, know, half, walk, talk, calm, palm, column, lamb, thumb, plumber, wrist, write, wrestle, daughter, right, though, island
Silent letters are the letters in words that are not pronounced but make a huge difference to the meaning and sometimes the pronunciation of a word.
Most silent letters were pronounced for centuries then they became silent, but the spelling was already fixed so were left in the spelling to show the history and pronunciation 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.
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: write/right, sight/site, 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. It also can change the pronunciation even though it's silent: two/to/too, sin/sign, rat/rate, sit/sight, in/inn
3. Magic 'e' Silent ‘e’ - if you add 'e' to the end of short vowel sound words, it makes a long vowel 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. The letter h is pronounced and unpronounced in some words and in some accents. In the word herb: The h is pronounced in British English but not in American, and some British accents.
5. H is silent in a lot of accents. For me h is a difficult letter to pronounce because I grew up dropping the h and so my muscle memory doesn't like it at all! But the h is silent in some words from French: hour, honest, honour, heir.
6. Silent letters 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 is 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'?
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.
2. Plumber comes from the Latin word "plumbum" for lead (lead pipe used by Roman plumbers!)
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. Then the French invaded and messed around with our spelling and added the g. Then the -gh- became silent or pronounced with a “f” sound, (it’s thought that some areas had already been saying these words with an “f” sound).
Find out more in my ebook - The Reasons Why English Spelling is so Weird and Wonderful. Click here for more information about the ebook that'll change the way you think about spelling and improve it.
Silent letter rules
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' knee, know, knuckle, knock, knit, knack
silent 'w' before 'r' write, wrist, wrong, wrap, wreck
silent 'g' before 'n' gnash, gnat, gnaw, gnarl, gnarly
silent 'p' before 's' psychic, psychology, psychiatry, psalm
Some words have silent letters in the middle or at the end.
'l' is often before 'k' folk, yolk, talk, walk
‘b’ is often silent after ‘m’ plumber, crumb, comb, tomb, thumb
‘n’ is often silent after ‘m’ autumn, column
‘t’ is often silent after ‘s’ listen, castle, whistle, wrestle
Careful in some words the silent letters are voiced, which makes them easier to say: crumb — crumble; sign — signature, signal; autumn — autumnal
Do the spelling test and word search below.
Then click here to go to the Why is English Spelling so Confusing? lesson.
The spelling test below has some important words with silent letters in them. There are 18 key words.
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