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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, which resembles the Scandinavian letter Ø. A null or zero is an unpronounced or unwritten segment.
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 ...
A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounced for many generations or even hundreds of years have increasingly been pronounced as written, especially since the arrival of mandatory schooling ...
The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. [note 7] For this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ʔ , originally had the form of a question mark with the dot removed.
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 6 March 2025. Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters English alphabet An English-language pangram written with the FF Dax Regular typeface Script type Alphabet Time period c. 16th century – present Languages English Related scripts Parent systems (Proto-writing) Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto ...
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 ...
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 ...
A silent u can indicate a hard pronunciation in words borrowed from French (as in analogue, league, guide) or words influenced by French spelling conventions (guess, guest); a silent h serves a similar purpose in Italian-derived words (ghetto, spaghetti).