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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.
Additionally, trigraphs are sometimes followed by silent letters, and these sequences may be considered with tetragraphs: cque is pronounced [k] in words such as grecque and Mecque, where the trigraph cqu is followed by the feminine suffix -e.
Not all silent letters are completely redundant: 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.
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).
For the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation; for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet. Diacritics were not regularly used, but they did occur sometimes, the most common being the apex used to mark long vowels , which had previously sometimes been written doubled.
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 14 December 2024. See also: List of Cyrillic multigraphs Main articles: Cyrillic script, Cyrillic alphabets, and Early Cyrillic alphabet This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. This is a list of letters of the ...
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This list of all two-letter combinations includes 1352 (2 × 26 2) of the possible 2704 (52 2) combinations of upper and lower case from the modern core Latin alphabet. A two-letter combination in bold means that the link links straight to a Wikipedia article (not a disambiguation page).