In English pronunciation, a silent letter—a term used informally—is a letter or letter combination of the alphabet that is usually not pronounced in a word. Examples include the b in subtle, the c in scissors, the g in design, the t in listen, and the gh in thought.
Many words contain silent letters. In fact, according to Ursula Dubosarsky, author of The Word Snoop, “roughly 60 percent of words in English have a silent letter in them,” (Dubosarsky 2008). Keep reading to learn the types of silent letters as well as how they affect pronunciation and English language learning.
Dummy Letters
“Dummy letters have two subgroups: inert letters and empty letters.
Inert letters are letters that in a given word segment are sometimes heard and sometimes not heard. For example,
- resign (g is not heard)
- resignation (g is heard)
“Empty letters do not have a function like auxiliary letters or inert letters. For example, the letter u in the word gauge is empty. Here are some examples of silent consonants:
- b: dumb, thumb
- c: indict
- ch: yacht
But, as a recent article in Reader’s Digest points out, nearly every letter in the English language is not heard sometimes. There is only one letter in the language that is never silent. Can you guess what it is?
The letter is “V” There are various very valuable v-words, and that V is never silent.
If you’re thinking, “Wait, but what about A!? What about X!?” you can check out Wikipedia’s list of silent letters from A to Z. (You might notice that they do have something listed under V, but it’s the name of a town in Scotland, which isn’t exactly an English word in the way we generally think of things.)
Thank you for reading and knowing a little more about your Alphabet
