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Silent letters can distinguish between homophones; e.g., in/inn; be/bee; lent/leant. This is an aid to readers already familiar with both words. Silent letters may give an insight into the meaning or origin of a word; e.g., vineyard suggests vines more than the phonetic *vinyard would.
In English orthography, the letter k normally reflects the pronunciation of [] and the letter g normally is pronounced /ɡ/ or "hard" g , as in goose, gargoyle and game; /d͡ʒ/ or "soft" g , generally before i or e , as in giant, ginger and geology; or /ʒ/ in some words of French origin, such as rouge, beige and genre.
Silent e is used in some words with dg in which it does not lengthen a vowel: rĭdgɇ, slĕdgɇ, hŏdgɇ-pŏdgɇ. Spelling such words with j , the other letter that indicates that sound, does not occur in native or nativized English words.
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 ...
Mimics Polish Krzyżewski but with a silent initial "k" Patricia Wrede: REED-ee / ˈ r iː d i / American author Patti Scialfa: SKAL-fə / ˈ s k æ l f ə / American singer Pete Reiser: REESS-ər / ˈ r iː s ər / American baseball player and coach Peter Agre: AHG-ray / ˈ ɑː ɡ r eɪ / [13] American chemist Rachael Scdoris: sə-DOR-iss / s ...
Some words contain silent letters, which do not represent any sound in modern English pronunciation. Examples include the l in talk , half , calf , etc., the w in two and sword , gh as mentioned above in numerous words such as though , daughter , night , brought , and the commonly encountered silent e (discussed further below).
It is considered a single letter, called għajn (the same word for eye and spring, named for the corresponding Arabic letter ʿayn). It is usually silent, but it is necessary to be included because it changes the pronunciation of neighbouring letters, usually lengthening the succeeding vowels. At the end of a word, when not substituted by an ...
The letter א aleph is a zero consonant in Ashkenazi Hebrew. It originally represented a glottal stop, a value it retains in other Hebrew dialects and in formal Israeli Hebrew. In Arabic, the non-hamzated letter ا alif is often a placeholder for an initial vowel. In Javanese script, the letter ꦲ ha is used for a vowel (silent 'h').