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For the distinction between [ ], / / and , see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign U+2205 ∅ EMPTY SET.
Some sources distinguish "diacritical marks" (marks upon standard letters in the A–Z 26-letter alphabet) from "special characters" (letters not marked but radically modified from the standard 26-letter alphabet) such as Old English and Icelandic eth (Ð, ð) and thorn (uppercase Þ, lowercase þ), and ligatures such as Latin and Anglo-Saxon Æ (minuscule: æ), and German eszett (ß; final ...
Languages that treat accented letters as variants of the underlying letter usually alphabetize words with such symbols immediately after similar unmarked words. For instance, in German where two words differ only by an umlaut, the word without it is sorted first in German dictionaries (e.g. schon and then schön , or fallen and then fällen ).
The English language is notorious for its use of silent letters. In fact, about 60 percent of English words contain a silent letter. In many cases, these silent letters actually were pronounced ...
English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, [ 1][ 2] allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. [ 3] It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation . Like the orthography of most world languages, English orthography has a broad ...
A heteronym is a homograph that is not a homophone, a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word with the same spelling. Heteronym pronunciation may vary in vowel realisation, in stress pattern, or in other ways. "Heterophone" literally just means "different sound", and this term is sometimes applied to words that are ...
The kn and gn letter combinations usually indicate a Germanic origin of the word. In Old English, k and g were not silent when preceding n . Cognates in other Germanic languages show that the k was probably a voiceless velar plosive in Proto-Germanic. For example, the initial k is not silent in words such as German Knecht which is a cognate of ...
Silent aleph and silent aliph / alif - see Silent letter#Semitic languages Pages in category "Silent letters" The following 6 pages are in this category, out of 6 total.