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Final consonants that might be silent in other contexts (finally or before another consonant) may seem to reappear in pronunciation in liaison: ils ont "they have", as opposed to ils sont [il sɔ̃] "they are"; liaison is the retention (between words in certain syntactic relationships) of a historical sound otherwise lost, and often has ...
Variably by dialect and even word, the / j / in this / j uː / may drop (rune / ˈ r uː n /, lute / ˈ l uː t /), causing a merger with / uː /; in other cases, the /j/ coalesces with the preceding consonant (issue / ˈ ɪ s. j uː / → / ˈ ɪ ʃ uː /), meaning that the silent e can affect the quality of a consonant much earlier in the ...
This is a list of all the consonants which have a dedicated letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet, plus some of the consonants which require diacritics, ordered by place and manner of articulation.
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 ...
For example, the initial k is not silent in words such as German Knecht which is a cognate of knight, Knoten which is a cognate of knot, etc. Likewise, g was probably a voiced velar plosive and the initial g was not silent: for example, German Gnom , a cognate of gnome , Gneis , a cognate of gneiss , etc.
This example illustrates how the aspirated h-word héros prevents the liaison, in which the otherwise-silent word-final consonant would be pronounced before the first vowel of the following word. Because the h is an aspirated h , the second entry is incorrect, as the hiatus prevents the final /z/ from being phonetically realised.
In Javanese script, the letter ꦲ ha is used for a vowel (silent 'h'). In Korean hangul, the zero consonant is ㅇ (이응) ieung. It appears twice in 아음; a-eum, "velar consonant". ㅇ also represents /ŋ/-ng at the end of a syllable, but historically this was a distinct letter.
There is an article containing a list of words with silent letters for each letter A-Z. It is nominated as an Article for Deletion, so I completely rewrote it to include some of the history of why there are so many silent letters in English words. It is called Silent English alphabet. You are invited to contribute to the discussion regarding ...