MENU

 Home
 Grammar
 Four Skills
 How to
 IELTS
 Vocabulary
 Essay Writing
 Tech
 Contact Us
HOME
READING
Silent Letters In English

READING

Silent Letters in English

BISMO
Learning English as a second language is not an easy task. For most of the people its the pronunciation
issue that causes most of the problems. People face very common pronunciation issues when learning
English as a second language. This can be one of the reasons they can’t comprehend when listening to
native speakers, because they are not familiar with accurate pronunciation of the words. One prominent
problem can be silent letters in English. In this lesson we will talk about silent letters in English to help
you pronounce the words correctly.

Silent Letters in English

What is a silent letter?
A silent letter is the letter in words that are not pronounced but make a huge difference to the meaning and
pronunciation of the whole word.
Looking back to the history of the language, these letters were pronounced initially, and then they became
silent. There are a lot of silent letters in English, it’s said that around 60 % of words in English have silent
letters. This makes spelling and pronunciation more difficult for learners. Below we will look at some
silent letter rules that will help you recognize when certain letters are to be silent.
Silent Letters in English
There are some rules that explain which letters are supposed to be silent, before and after certain letters
(the only issue about this is that, like all English rules – there are usually some exceptions!). once you start
practicing these rules and using with new vocabulary that you learn, it will become easier to
remember silent letters in English.
Silent B
Rule 1: The letter B is usually not pronounced after M at the end of a word.
• Comb, bomb, thumb, climb, tomb, crumb, lamb
Rule 2: B is usually not pronounced before the letter T.
• Doubt, doubtful, subtle, debt.
Silent C
Rule 1: The letter C is usually not pronounced in the combination of SC.
• Scissors, ascent, fascinate, muscle.
Rule 2: C is usually mute before the letters K and Q.
• Lock, block, puck, acknowledge.
• Aqua, Acquit, Acquiesce.
Silent D
Rule 1: The letter D is silent when it appears before the letters N and G.
• Wednesday, cadge, Pledge, grudge.
Rule 2: D is not pronounced in the following Common words:
• Wednesday, handsome, handkerchief, sandwich.
Silent E
Rule 1: If the letter E comes at the ends of words, it is generally not pronounced.
• Fore, table, before, write, give, hide.
Rule 2: If E occurs before the letter D in the second and third form of the verbs, E may sometimes not to
be pronounced.
• Bored, fixed, smuggled, begged.
Silent G
Rule 1: The G letter is not pronounced when it comes before N in a word.
• Design, foreign, sign, gnash, align.
Exceptions: Magnet, igneous, cognitive, signature
Silent GH
Rule 1: GH is not pronounced when it comes after a vowel in a word.
• High, light, thought, through alight.
Rules 2: Exceptions: GH is pronounced separately in compound words (As you can see in the following
words that exceptions are generally compound words).
• Doghouse, bighead, foghorn.
Rule 3: Except examples from rule 1, GH is sometimes pronounced like F, consider the words below.
• Draught, cough, laugh, tough.
Silent H
Rule 1: The letter H is usually silent when it appears after W.
• Why, what, when, weather, where.
Rule 2: Sometimes the letter H is not silent after W, consider the words below.
• Whose, whosoever, who, whoever, whole.
Rule 3: H is mute at the beginning of many words (remember to use the article “an” with unvoiced H).
• Hour, honest, honour, heir.
Rule 4: Exceptions: Most of the words beginning with H are not silent (remember to use the article “a”
with voiced H)
• History, Historical, Hair, Happy.
Silent K
Rule: The letter K is always silent when it precedes the letter N in a word.
• Know, knock, knife, knight, knowledge.
Silent L
Rule: The letter L is usually not pronounced after the vowels: A, O and U.
• Calf, half, palm, would, should, could, folk, yolk.
Silent N
Rule: The letter N is not pronounced when it comes after M at the end of a word.
• Column, damn, solemn, autumn.
Silent P
Rule: The letter P is not pronounced at the he beginning of many words using the combinations PS, PT
and PN.
• Psalm, psephology, pterodactyl, pneumonia, pneumatic.
Silent PH
Rule: PH is sometimes pronounced like F.
• Sophia, paragraph, elephant, telephone.
Silent S
Rule: The letter S is not pronounced before L in the following words:
• Aisle, island, isle, islet.
Silent T
Rule: The letter T is not pronounced in the following common English words:
• Castle, Christmas, fasten, listen, often, beret, Chevrolet, whistle, thistle, bustle, hasten, soften, rapport,
gourmet, ballet. (Please click here to know how to pronounce T in English).
Silent U
Rule: The letter U is not pronounced when it comes after G and before a vowel in a word.
• Guide, guest, guard, guess, guano.
Silent W
Rule 1: The letter W is not pronounced at the beginning of a word when it is before the letter R.
• Write, wrest, wrong, wrack, wrap.
Rule 2: W is silent in the following words:
• Who, whose, whole, whom, whole, whoever, answer, sword, two.
IMPORTANT: Pronunciation matters a lot. Despite, having good grammar accuracy and vocabulary power
if your pronunciation is imprecise or wrong your speaking will be ineffective. Below I have listed the rules
for common miss pronounced words or letters that will help you to avoid common errors in pronunciation.
Just click on the links.

Pronunciation of Reductions
Sounds of the Plural –S in English

Pronunciation of ED Endings

Silent T & D American Pronunciation

 The American T Sound

American pronunciation of TH

Share this:

 11Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)11

 Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
 Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
 Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
 Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
 Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)


SUGGESTED NEWS
It's Easy To See What Made These 8 Sexy Celebs Famous

10 Absolutely Worst Movies We Watched In 2018

Top 10 Vegetarian Models 2019

Top 10 Irresistible Beauties From Asia

These 11 Bollywood Actresses Will Make Your Jaw Drop

10 Asian Actresses Whose Beauty Got Famous All Over The World
 PREV ARTICLE
NEXT ARTICLE

Related Articles

Independence day or día de la Independencia is a Mexican …

Silent Letters in English

Compère or an anchor plays a vital role in making …

Silent Letters in English

About The Author

BISMO
I’m an instructor who teaches ESL. I would like to write and share my experience through this
website and help people learn English as a second language.

10 Comments

1. Error! Filename not specified.

Shais
Welcome back with great article.
May 13, 2016

 Error! Filename not specified.

Jalali
Thank You Mr. Shais.
October 5, 2016

2. Error! Filename not specified.

Rodney91
I see a lot of interesting posts here. Your content can go viral easily, you need some initial traffic
only.
How to get initial traffic? Search for: masitsu’s viral method
October 5, 2016

 Error! Filename not specified.

Jalali
Thank you Rodney dear for your precious feedback. I do my best to help people learn better
English by publishing erudite posts.
October 5, 2016

3. Error! Filename not specified.

Cierra96
Hi, i noticed that your page is a bit slow, it took around 5sec.
to load this article. Do you know that page speed
is major ranking factor for google now? If you speed up your website loading time you can rank
higher
and get more targeted traffic.
November 28, 2016

 Error! Filename not specified.

Jalali
Hello dear Cierra,
Recently we have changed the web hosting. So on our website will be loaded faster and better.
January 3, 2017

4. Error! Filename not specified.

Aadi
Thanks for the silent letters rules and more useful articles for English learners.
December 20, 2016

 Error! Filename not specified.

Jalali
Welcome dear Aadi.
December 20, 2016

5. Error! Filename not specified.

Simplejust 4U
Interesting article, that’s what esl need to beware about, pronunciation is very important for
having a good and clear accent , pronunciation is the right way to the fluency. ..
March 30, 2017

6. Error! Filename not specified.

Sonam pandey
Good explanation…thanks
February 13, 2018

Leave a Reply
 FAMOUS PAGES

Tenses
Verbs
Nouns
Pronouns
Adjectives
Adverbs
Modal Verbs
Prepositions
Conditionals
Wh Questions
Rejoinders
Gerunds & Infinitives
Active & Passive
Direct & Indirect
Pronunciation
Silent Letters
Cover Letter & CV
Anchoring Script
Sample Letters
Writing Service

 Home
 Contact Us
 About us
 Privacy Policy

Follow us on







Copyright © 2019 Learn ESL