Silent letter

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 , which resembles the Scandinavian letter Ø. A null or zero is an unpronounced or unwritten segment.

English

One of the noted difficulties of English spelling is a high number of silent letters. Edward Carney distinguishes different kinds of "silent" letters, which present differing degrees of difficulty to readers.
* Auxiliary letters which, with another letter, constitute digraphs; i.e., two letters combined which represent a single phoneme. These may further be categorized as:
** "Exocentric" digraphs, where the sound of the digraph is different from that of either of its constituent letters. These are rarely considered "silent". Examples:
*** Where the phoneme has no standard single-letter representation, as with consonants for as in ''sing'', for as in ''thin'' or as in ''then'', or diphthongs in ''out'' or in ''point''. These are the default spellings for the relevant sounds and present no special difficulty for readers or writers.
*** Where standard single-letter representation uses another letter, as with in ''enough'' or in ''physical'' instead of . These may be considered irregular for writers, but less difficult for readers.
** "Endocentric" digraphs, where the sound of the digraph is the same as that of one of its constituent letters. These include:
*** Most double consonants, as in ''clubbed''; though not geminate consonants, as in ''misspell''. Doubling due to suffixation or inflection is regular; otherwise, it may present difficulty to writers (e.g., ''accommodate'' is often misspelled), but not to readers.
*** Many vowel digraphs, as , , in ''leave'' (cf. ''accede''), ''achieve'', ''eulogy'' (cf. ''utopia'').
*** The discontiguous digraphs, whose second element is " magic e"; e.g., in ''rate'' (cf. ''rat''), in ''fine'' (cf. ''fin''). This is the regular way to represent "long" vowels in the last syllable of a morpheme.
*** Others, such as (which is in effect the "doubled" form of ), as in ''guard'', ''vogue''; as in ''bread'', ''heavy'', etc.; , as in ''aerial'', ''oedipal''. These may be difficult for writers and sometimes also for readers.
* Dummy letters with no relation to neighboring letters and no correspondence in pronunciation:
** Some are inert letters, which are sounded in a cognate word; e.g., in ''damn'' (cf. ''damnation''); in ''phlegm'' (cf. ''phlegmatic''); in ''practically'' (cf. ''practical''); in ''ballet'' (cf. ''balletic''); in su''b''tle (cf. ''subtility''). If the cognate is obvious, it may aid writers in spelling, but mislead readers in pronunciation.
** The rest are empty letters, which never have a sound; e.g., in dou''b''t, in ''h''onor, in ans''w''er, in Sara''h'', in i''s''land. These may present the greatest difficulty to writers and often to readers, as well.

The distinction between "endocentric" digraphs and empty letters is somewhat arbitrary. For example, in such words as ''little'' and ''bottle'', one might view as an "endocentric" digraph for , or view as an empty letter; similarly, with or in ''buy'' and ''build''.

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.
* Silent letters may help the reader to stress the correct syllable (compare ''physics'' to ''physiques''). The final in ''giraffe'' gives a clue to the second-syllable stress, where ''*giraf'' might suggest initial-stress.

Silent letters arise in several ways:
* Sound changes occurring without a spelling change. The digraph was pronounced in Middle English in such words as ''light''.
* Sound distinctions from foreign languages may be lost, as with the distinction between smooth rho (ρ) and roughly aspirated rho (ῥ) in Ancient Greek, represented by and in Latin, but merged to the same in English.
* Clusters of consonants may be simplified, producing silent letters; e.g., silent in ''asthma'', silent in ''Christmas'' (in conservative RP, it is pronounced /krɪstməs/, as opposed to /krɪsməs/ in all other dialects). Similarly, with alien clusters, such as Greek initial in ''psychology'' and in ''mnemonic'', and the much rarer clusters in '' chthonic'' and '' phthalate''.
* Compound words are often simplified in pronunciation, while their spelling remains the same. For example, ''cupboard'' and ''breakfast'' were once pronounced as written, but were then simplified over time. The words ''forehead'' and ''waistcoat'' have largely reverted to their spelling pronunciations, but were once pronounced *''forrid'' and *''weskit'', respectively.
* Occasionally, spurious letters are consciously inserted in spelling to reflect etymology (real or imagined). The in ''debt'' and ''doubt'' (from French ''dette, doute'') was inserted to match Latin cognates like ''debit'' and ''dubitable''. A silent was inserted in ''isle'' (Norman French ''ile'', Old French

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases