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Silent Letters: a
Pronunciation Guide

Silent letters are an unavoidable and

di!cult area of English for natives
and learners alike. Here we go
through them looking at their origins
and patterns, and try to "nd some
answers….

A very quick note on the history of English: Modern

English is a language of Germanic roots from the
Anglo Saxon period (5th century to 12th century).
The Norman-French invasion of 1066 brought a
huge amount of French vocabulary of Latin
origin
origin, mixing with Anglo Saxon grammar and
pronunciation to form Modern English around the
15th century.

Silent b
 00:00 00:00

The letter ‘b’ is silent at the end of a root word

with the combination MB, so Germanic words
CLIMB, THUMB, COMB, LAMB, CRUMB,
LIMB, WOMB and DUMB all end in /m/ not
/b/. Some Latin words have also entered
English adopting this ending, like BOMB,
APLOMB and TOMB. This silent ‘b’ gives us
one of the strangest homographs in English: /
ˈnʌmə/ meaning more numb, and /ˈnʌmbə/ an
arithmetical value, both spelt NUMBER.

Silent c

00:00 00:00

It is indeed FASCINATING that the letter ‘c’ is

not always pronounced in the combination SC,
giving us SCINTILLATING words like
SCISSORS, ASCEND, DISCERN, MUSCLE and
SCIENCE. It doesn’t always happen though, the
‘c’ is a /k/ in SCEPTIC, SCAR, SCARE, SCORN,
SCORCH, SCOPE and SCANDALOUS

Silent d

00:00 00:00

Perhaps silent ‘d’ is most commonly found in

the word WEDNESDAY, which is from
“Woden’s Day” – Woden being a Germanic god.
The /d/ mysteriously disappeared around the
15th century and hasn’t made a comeback yet.
‘d’ also has a habit of disappearing when
sandwiched between 2 consonants, like in the
word…. SANDWICH, originally the name of a
coastal town in Kent and of Germanic origin
meaning ‘sandy harbour’. Its modern culinary
use appeared when the 4th Earl of Sandwich
became so addicted to gambling in the 18th
century that he would only eat cold meat
between slices of bread so as to avoid leaving
the gambling table to dine properly. This
optional silent ‘d’ can also be heard, or rather
not heard, in HANDBAG, and has de"nitely
disappeared in HANDKERCHIEF and
HANDSOME.

Silent g

00:00 00:00

The letter ‘g’ is not pronounced when it’s

followed by ’n’ at the end of a syllable. So
FOREIGN, SIGN, DEIGN, DESIGN, and ALIGN
have no ‘g’, all of which entered England via
France, a journey made today by large
quantities of expensive bubbly white wine
known as CHAMPAGNE. Cheers!!!

Germanic action words GNARL, GNAW and

GNASH, all start with silent ‘g’, as does the
swarming insect, GNAT. But possibly the most
common word starting with GN is of Latin
origin, and is a regular feature in English
gardens: the GNOME.

Silent gh

00:00 00:00
A group of words that didn’t journey through
France are those with a silent ‘gh’, like
DROUGHT, THOUGHT, THROUGH,
THOROUGH, BOROUGH, DAUGHTER and
MIGHT. These came from Germanic roots,
though not all words developed a silent ‘gh’ –
others developed a /f/, like COUGH, ROUGH,
TOUGH, ENOUGH and LAUGH.

Silent h

00:00 00:00

Broadly speaking we don’t pronounce the ‘h’ in

words imported from French like HOUR,
HONOUR, HEIR, EXHIBITION and VEHICLE.
In practice, ‘h’ disappears in other places where
we connect speech too, and many native
English speakers never pronounce it – so called
‘h droppers’.

For more on ‘h droppers’, pronounced and silent h, see

this post.

Silent k

00:00 00:00

There’s a KNACK to this rule. Words with ‘kn’

have a silent ‘k’ and are of Germanic origin:
KNEE, KNOT, KNIT, KNAVE, KNEAD, KNEEL,
KNIGHT, KNOW, KNOWLEDGE and a#er
saying all of them you might feel a little bit
KNACKERED.

Silent l
 00:00 00:00

‘l’ is o#en silent a#er ‘a’, but tends to create a

long vowel: /ɔː/ in WALK, TALK, BALK,/ɑː/ in
CALM, PALM, PSALM, HALF and CALF. The
modal verbs WOULD, COULD and SHOULD
shouldn’t contain /l/ nor should FOLK or
YOLK. The "sh SALMON has no /l/, coming
from the French “saumone”, the English word
took the ‘l’ from the original Latin word ‘salmo’,
just to confuse folk.

Silent n

00:00 00:00

’n’ is normally pronounced when it’s written,

except in one unique set of words originating
from Latin, that end in ‘mn’: AUTUMN,
COLUMN, CONDEMN, HYMN and SOLEMN,
all of which sound DAMN good to me.

Silent p

00:00 00:00

‘p’ is not pronounced in words beginning PN,

PS or the less common PT which generally have
arrived in English from Greek via Latin, so
PNEUMONIA, PSYCHOLOGY, and PTOMAIN
have no /p/. Also look out for modern French
imported word COUP, which is pronounced
identically to COO, the sound pigeons make.
Then there’s the odd case of RECEIPT – which
comes from Anglo-Norman French receite, the
‘p’ was later inserted to imitate the original
Latin word recipere but is not pronounced,
presumably to confuse second language shop
keepers all over the world.

Silent r

00:00 00:00

In GB English we only pronounce /r/ if it comes

before a vowel sound, so it’s silent in CARD,
WORK, POUR and MOTHER. In American
English, though, all ‘r’s are pronounced CARD,
WORK, POUR and MOTHER.

For more see ‘r – the Strangest Sound in English?’

Silent s

00:00 00:00

Words with silent ’s’ "t into two categories.

There are the fancy sounding ones taken from
modern French like BOURGEOIS, DEBRIS,
PATOIS, APROPOS and CHAMOIS (which
posh people call a /ˈʃæmwɑː/). But there is also a
strange case of Germanic ISLAND and French
AISLE, neither of which had an ’s’ in the
spelling until people started confusing them
with the unrelated but vaguely similar ISLE,
which comes from the Latin word insula. Of
course, you can never accuse the British of
being insular, can you?

Silent t
 00:00 00:00

The English famously love tea, but they don’t

always say ’t’. The word ending ‘-sten’ doesn’t
contain /t/, so FASTEN, LISTEN, MOISTEN
and CHASTEN, likewise those ending ‘-stle’
NESTLE, WRESTLE, THISTLE and CASTLE.
There are some very sophisticated French
imported words which entered English much
more recently like BALLET, GOURMET and
RAPPORT which all copy the French
pronunciation without ’t’. And "nally, English
speakers o#en drop the ’t’ in OFTEN and
SOFTEN.

Silent w

00:00 00:00

The spelling ‘wh’ which originates from Old

English ‘hw’ normally has a silent w when
followed by a rounded vowel WHO, WHOM,
WHOSE, WHORE and WHOLE, though not in
the onomatopoeic words WHOOSH or
WHOOP which entered English much later.

The Germanic words SWORD and ANSWER

! contain a silent ‘w’. There is also a group of
words beginning with WR in which the ‘w’ is
silent, all of them are of Germanic origin, and
" are quite dramatic in meaning: WRING,
WRESTLE, WRAP, WRECK, and WRIST. Note
also that WRONG has a ‘w’ but its antonym
# RIGHT does not, and just to confuse matters
further, the verb WRITE does have a ‘w’,
alright?
$
 % This article uses IPA (phonetic) symbols – you can
learn them in the free Pronunciation Studio Starter
Pack containing pronunciation notes and diagrams
for each sound with audio, and an English IPA chart.

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By Joseph Hudson | August 31st, 2017 | Pronunciation,
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