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In English orthography, many words feature a silent e (single, final, non-syllabic ‘e’), most commonly at the end of a word or morpheme. Typically it represents a vowel sound that was formerly pronounced, but became silent in late Middle English or Early Modern English .
Furthermore, the schwa can prevent an awkward ending of a word ending in a consonant and a liquid (peuple, sucre). After é , i , or u , a final e is silent. The spelling eau is pronounced just the same as that for au and is entirely an etymological distinction, so in that context, the e is silent.
Tense vowels are distinguished from lax vowels with a "silent" e that is added at the end of words. Thus, a in hat is lax /æ/, but when e is added in the word hate a is tense /eɪ/. Heavy and tense-r vowels follow a similar pattern, e.g. ar in car is heavy /ɑːr/, ar followed by silent e in care is /ɛər/.
In the cases of maté from Spanish mate (/ ˈ m ɑː t eɪ /; Spanish:), animé from Japanese anime, and latté or even lattè from Italian latte (/ ˈ l ɑː t eɪ /; Italian pronunciation: ⓘ), an accent on the final e indicates that the word is pronounced with / eɪ / ⓘ at the end, rather than the e being silent.
A silent e can occur at the end of a word – or at the end of a component root word that is part of a larger word – after g as well as word-internally. In this situation, the e usually serves a marking function that helps to indicate that the g immediately before it is soft.
Related: 16 Games Like Wordle To Give You Your Word Game Fix More Than Once Every 24 Hours We'll have the answer below this friendly reminder of how to play the game .
A silent e can occur after c at the end of a word or component root word part of a larger word. The e can serve a marking function indicating that the preceding c is soft, as in dance and enhancement. The silent e often additionally indicates that the vowel before c is a long vowel, as in rice, mace, and pacesetter.
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