What's Up With Silent Letters?
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SOURCES AND FURTHER READING
Silent Letters: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_...
Definition & Examples Of Silent Letters: www.thoughtco.com/silent-lett...
Silent Letter Examples: 7esl.com/silent-letters/
Silent Letters In English Words: rattanji78.blogspot.com/
Digraphs: www.theschoolrun.com/What-is-...
Silent E: grammar.yourdictionary.com/wo...
Girls names With Silent Letters: community.babycenter.com/post...
Boys names With Silent Letters: answers.yahoo.com/question/in...
Country Names With Silent Letters: www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/...
Why Do We Have Silent Letters?: www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...
Eth: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth
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"Olde Timey" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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"Farting Around" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)
Let's hear some silent letters in words from your language!
Also sorry how awful my voice sounds in this video. I have a cold/sore throat at the moment, send love and lemsips.
Name Explain In Turkish, we have soft G (Ğ ğ) which is silent but it connects vowels together, such as Aldığın or Erdoğan
"Шофьор" [Shofior]
"ь" simply exists to be a replacement for "й" after consonants (that's what translate says). "й" itself is used in all other cases. It changes the vowels, with putting something like an "ee" sound in front of them. Also "ь" is not a sound and is instead called "ер-малък" (er-small).
R is only silent if you speak in a non-rhotic dialect ;)
The L in folk is one example where it's obvious you are wrong. If you removed (silenced) it you'd have fok ... Which is nearer being rude than your door furniture comment.
French is indeed full of silent letters, especially at the end of words. The letters b, c, d, e, g, h, k, p, r, s, t and z can all be silent at the end of words and even combinations of two or even three letters can also be silent (Like the “ent” at the end of verbs, as in “Ils étaient” [French for: “They were”; 3rd person, plural of imperfect tense). The H is always silent, especially at the beginning of words, and only modifies the sound of other letters and I’m sure I am forgetting a few.... I’m pretty sure French had a strong influence on English when it comes to.
My very own surname has a silent "t" at the end of it, befuddling all non-speakers of French.
The vowels in Queue aren't silent, they're just waiting their turn....
An original comment after so much time
You came up with one really strange English word! Hail you!!
I've heard the British are great at this.
@@Fuzzems I thought it was a French word.
yooooo 🤣😂
The H in Liechtenstein isn't silent but part of the digraph of ch
hmmm actually ch is pronounced as c there so the h is silent
@@junovzla I wasn't aware that ch was pronounced like that, I am dutch where ch sounds like a g (just like in german)
@@timvlaar if we're going by the German (Idk if people from Lichtenstein say it differntly) pronunciation of Liechtenstein then the CH is a digraph. it is also used in other words like "reich" (rich) and sounds like the beginning of "Jalapeño", i can't think of an English word as an example right now.
I don't know what "G" sounds like in Dutch, but a "C" in German is rarely used alone, because we use "K" instead e.g. cat becomes "Katze" in German not "Catze".
Drift11> hmmm actually ch is pronounced as c there so the h is silent
That's not very helpful because 'c' can make many sounds (cent, cat, Cesare, etc.)
@@junovzla the ch in "liechtenstein" is indeed pronounced /k/ in english, but in german it is part of a digraph to make the /ç/ sound
There is a major difference in accent: my American English accent includes the L in folk and the R in iron.
The irony is, while the "L" in "folk" is often pronounced in North American English, but not in UK English, the "L" in "solder" (not to be confused with "soldier") is not pronounced in North American English but is pronounced in the UK.
In my American accent, the L is silent in folk and the O is often silent in iron.
And there you have it! You find English accent sexy? You leave some letters out when you speak and that’s it.
@@lucieciepka1031 Exactly, leave something for the imagination dammit
Hence why every other english speaker can't stand american english
English: sometimes doesn’t pronounce each letter
French: hold my wine
Who would whine about this ? ; )
@@OldF1000 Scots ! We don't pronounce which as witch , nor whales as Wales.
the thing is though: french has rules and unique signs for when letters are pronouced differently and "special cases" aren't that common unlike in english where I can't think of a rule that isn't broken so regularely that I argue by this point that english simply doesn't have rules. I don't speak french but I can read french and pronounce it well without understanding what it means because unlike the vocabular the grammar is a logical ruleset that stuck with me since school. Most languages can be pronounced from the written language because unlike English...they are actual languages. Accents come from not fully understanding/knowing a language or how it is pronounced, so having a million accents within your own border is a heavy indicator for your "language" not making sense, not being clearly identifiable and thus not being a full language. It's more of a "spoken tongue" than a language
@@AgeofJP I'm French and I studied English. I can tell you that English has rules, that's for sure (for example : fat / fate // kit / kite )
@@zigv8325 no doubt it has "rules"...but they barely make sense when special cases are allowed to break these rules in such quantity. Your example is actually a pretty well kept rule, but from the top of my head I instantly think of "bait" which should be written "bate". And that's just for the letter "t" after a vowel...if you look at how "d"s work after a vowel, there are rules for words that sound the same. red and read (past), led and lead. Spelling words differently despite them sounding exactly the same literally means the corresponding rules fail on the most basic level at being a rule. Special cases are already breaking the rules, but when there are rules that undermine each other then I argue there is no "rule".
If I see a french vowel I know how to pronounce it because the accent tells me how it's pronounced...
"Where is your place of birth?"
"Fareshore"
"How is it spelt?"
"Well, here we go again..."
I thought it was pronounced Fanshaw not Fairshaw?
@@GetMiloaLife You played Gene Machine, too? :D
Didn't know it was a real name though.
How is it spelt tho?
England is loaded to the hilt with those cities, towns and place names that are heavy on letters that no one says, or just quickly tosses together in a slur. Think Worcestershire. Typically people say it as "Worst-ih-sure" (the h after the i is there to indicate the i is not said as itself but more like "eh", but instead of an e, an i).
@@TheCriminalViolin It's due to sign painters in the UK being paid by the letter!
Gaelic is full of silent letters. In fact, there are so many that I have a theory that most people speak Gaelic all round us but we just can't hear it because of all the silent letters.
GAELIC (particularly Irish Gaelic) doesn’t have nearly as many silent letters as you might think. There used to be a ridiculous amount, because Gaelic often used to be spelt according to 400 year old spelling rules. The spelling reform of 1941 fixed all that, and now (Irish and Scots) Gaelic enjoy much more phonetic spelling than English. The reason the spelling looks so strange, is that the same (Roman) letters are employed completely differently, to represent different sounds, many of which don’t exist in English.
Gaelic has a lot of digraphs (mainly involving H) to represent sounds that have mutated from a plosive (or stop) consonant sound to a fricative sound (e.g. CH, which is pronounced similarly to German, and, like German, it actually represents two different sounds with a different tongue position). So Modern Gaelic includes the digraphs: BH, CH, DH, FH (which is always silent), GH, MH, PH, SH and TH. In previous centuries, when the Gaelic alphabet was in common use, a dot was put above the mutated consonant letter to indicate this ‘soft’ mutation, instead of using the letter H. However, conventionally there were three exceptions: CH, PH and TH. These were generally written as digraphs rather than dots, but only because these three digraphs existed in Latin... to represent Greek sounds!
Also, as almost consonants can be two different ways (depending on the tongue position - high or low), ‘silent’ vowel letters are placed next to the consonant letters to indicate the quality of the consonant. A, O, or U next to broad (low tongue position) consonants, and E or I next to slender (high tongue position) consonants. Spelling conventions determine which ‘silent’ vowel letter to use. For example, in Seán, the e is ‘silent’ but indicates that the s is ‘slender’, like the English sh. In Siobhán, the i is pronounced, but also indicates that the letter s is ‘slender’. The ‘silent’ o indicates that the bh (voiced bilabial fricative) is to be pronounced ‘broad’, with the tongue relaxed and low in the mouth, and the lips relaxed, something like an English w, but with unrounded lips, or like v but using only the lips, without using any teeth..... like trying to pronounce B without the lips actually touching.
Where Irish and Scots Gaelic DO actually uniquely employ silent letters is with the ‘mutation’ known as ‘eclipsis’. This is where the first sound of a word becomes affected by a previous sound (historically a nasal consonant), which changes a voiceless consonant into a voiced consonant, or changes a voiced consonant into a nasal consonant. For example, “bád” means “a boat”; “ar an mbád” means “on the boat”. The b has mutated (eclipsed) to m, so we write the m before the b (so we know how it’s pronounced) but we still write the b (now silent) so that we know what the word is. In one instance of eclipsis, g is replaced by ng (pronounced like the English word sing), so the original letter is not ‘silent’, but becomes part of a digraph. Other Celtic languages, like Welsh and Breton also mutate in similar fashion, but they don’t retain the original (now silent) letters. So learners of these languages need to have a good understanding of all the mutation rules before they go looking up a word in the dictionary! (To find the meaning of ‘y ferch’, you need to look up ‘merch’).
Like English, some sounds might get ‘dropped’ in a dialect. The Irish speakers of southwest Galway, for example, are famous for dropping their h’s.... but, unlike the Cockneys of London, it’s the h sound in the middle of words that gets dropped. ‘Beatha’ (life’s) is usually pronounced “baa” in southwest Galway instead of “baha”. (Remember the ‘e’ indicates a ‘slender b, with a raised tongue and pursed lips, and TH, a softened t, is pronounced h.
Likewise, just as in English, many common words or place names get pronounced very quickly, and tend to ‘lose’ sounds over time, so that some sounds get dropped and the letters that represent them become ‘silent’. One famous example is the capital of Ireland, Baile Átha Cliath, is usually pronounced as B’l’Á Cliath (blaw-KLEE-uh) by the native Irish speakers of the west coast. The only people that actually pronounce it completely (BA-leh AW-huh KLEE-uh) are the people of the city itself, (in English, Dublin) who generally don’t have Irish as their first language. Although many Dubliners speak Irish very well, the people of the Gaeltacht (the Irish speaking districts of the west) often note that they tend to pronounce every syllable very precisely (and sound like they might be spanking a child!) 🤭😜
Penumbra(pehn-uhm-bruh):
Noun: The darkest part of a shadow
Adjective: Something that is very dark or a climax, like the noun
Ex: "The penumbra is usually at the center of a shadow."
"That was a penumbric plot twist!"
@@noelleggett5368 and I always thought it was just revenge on the English... mind you, I'm half and half, so I'm getting revenge on myself?!?
@@lizjohnson1276 No, the Irish aren’t petty; the English are paranoid.
And why would the Irish make something difficult for themselves just to spite someone else? Only Americans do that!
my dad (who speaks irish gaelic) makes that joke all the time! he also says that irish stole all the vowels from welsh
A silent R in "Iron". I pronounce an R in "Iron" but I don't pronounce it phonetically, more like eye-urn.
me too! Scottish?
@@michaelkennedy8573 it's also in general american
«Iron» is NOT pronounced «ion» but «iRon».
@@Kualinar Iron is pronounced differently depending on accent
@@noahsrebels Yes, but I never heard pronounced with a silent «R», making iit sound like «ion»
The D in “hedge” and “adjacent,” R in “iron,” Y in “payer,” and L in “folk” aren’t silent. And the J in “hallelujah” is just pronounced like a Y, not silent.
Hmm... I said folk with a silent L, and now I'm in prison with a smuggled device.
Hey Facepalmers, this is a joke!
The d in adjacent is silent in my area. Uh-jay-cent.
For my ear it's O that is silent in 'iron'; and by the sound of it the word should look more like 'iern'. It's just Brits pronouncing their R's before other consonants so voicelessly in general they might think they're pronouncing O and not R in 'iron'.
@@blinski1 My area's "Iron" lacks an O.
Like an adjective
There’s a ton of examples of what the video claimed were “silent” but in different accents aren’t silent at all :/
Right off the bat, the "t" in Christmas. Just because it isn't emphasized doesn't mean it's silent.
@@capnjackdaniels3663 I honestly don't think I've ever heard anyone actually sound the 't' unless they were doing it on purpose to remind people that there should still be a christ in 'christ-mas'. I honestly think that most English speaking people say 'Chris-mus' or thereabouts.
I'm inclined to agree with you. I'm from the south of England, broadly the same accent region as the narrator, and even I would make this argument about 6 or 7 of his examples.
The 'a' in critically, and various other words ending in 'ally' is not supposed to be silent, it just tends to be the first sound in the word to be dropped if someone is speaking the word quickly.
The 'd' in hedge and other words with a 'dg' combination is more part of diagraph in that context, rather than truly silent. Hedge is a very slightly different pronunciation to if it was written heg or hej.
The 'i' in parliament is not really silent either. Strictly speaking in the 'rp' accent you would say 'par-lee-uh-ment', and most people I know would say something more like 'par-lee-ment' where they would in effect actually be sounding the 'i' and silencing the 'a'.
The 'd' in adjacent, as well as adjunct, adjective and other words is surely sounded, at least to a degree, too.
I'm also not convinced about the total silence of the 'l' in folk, the 'q' in lacquer, or both 'o's in colonel (willing to accept maybe the second 'o' is silent if all the other six letters are sounded).
@@MrDannyDetail I wouldbpronounce the t but the whole christ part in Christmas doesn't sound like the word Christ, but rather it rhymes with wrist
@@MrDannyDetail I feel like j without a d preceding it (except in initial position) would be pronounced like "zh" as in French, so the d is part of a digraph there too. As for parliamint, it's an unstressed vowel, and it's almost impossible to tell unstressed vowels from each other. Colonel being pronounced "kernel" is really weird, so which, if any letters are silent in it is itself an interesting question.
Lichtenstein only has a silent h when you pronounce it wrong. You as a Brit might be familiar with the scottish ch, that's approximately how it is really pronounced.
/liːçtən ˌʃtaɪn/
Some of these silent letters in words are debatable, though
Like critically (one can say the a is pronounced) and lacquer (c and qu are meshed together but one can argue that neither are actually omitted)
when I say critically I usually say the a actually
This is very interesting. In my language, Croatian, the situation is actually very simple in pronunciation department.
1. Every letter is pronounced. There are basically no silent letters.
2. Every letter is pronounced the same no matter where it stands in regards to the word itself or the sentence it's in.
There are *some exceptions* to this rule, one being in future form of verbs, if you rearrange the auxiliary verb ''to be'' second in order.
For example: ''Ja ću raditi'' (I will work) is pronounced in the usual way, with every letter spoken.
However, if you rearrange it and say ''Radit ću'', you have to drop the ''i'' at the end and then t + ć (ch) is pronounced together, with ''t'' being silent. So, while you write ''radit ću'', you pronounce it as ''radiću''.
In general, all the letters are pronounced. We say ''psiholog'' with sonic ''p'' and sonic ''h''. There are no vowels blending in either, like they usually do in English. Words like ''oaza'', ''Europa'', ''Kreol'' are pronounced with each vowel making it's own separate sound. Same as in names such as ''Diana'', ''Raul'' and ''Leona''. In general, nothing is left unsaid.
The rare exception to this rule would be words like ''predsjednik'' (president) and ''hrvatski'' (Croatian), where ''ds'' and ''ts'' respectively are pronounced roughly similar to the sound ''ts'', which itself has it's own letter in the language - ''c''. But here, we don't write ''c'', but still pronounce it as such. These exceptions are very sparse and saying that the language is pronounced as it's written is a statement true enough.
"B is always silent if there is an M before it"
Number.
Numer...
@@simonschnedl nummer, the m goes geminate after the removal of b, and i can hear that a lot, it's just hard to notice since nummer and number sound almost the same
Umbrella. Somebody (kinda).
Number isn't a "word", it's two "words", it's sort of a blend.
Wait, you mean number as in numeral, not as in more numb...
The "H" ending in hebrew names like Sarah, Deborah or Gedaliah is spelling carried over from the original language because the hebrew letter H - ה - is many times used to signify that the last sound is a vowel. If Sarah is written שר insted of שרה it will be pronounced as "Sar". Since hebrew is an abgad language and consistent vowel markings didn't evolve until the early middle ages, many words and names are spelled like this. You can also often tell homophonal words apart since there are letters that double duty which makes two letters for one sound in some cases like T (ט ת), S (ש ס) or KH (ח כ).
Aaron is another great example, it is pronounced "Aharon" in hebrew and for some strange reason the H disappeared but the double A stayed when it came over to the indo-european languages.
In swedish the word "Knekt" means knave, which interestingly is spelled different from "Knäckt", which means broken but is pronounced the same.
This is so much more educational than just saying there is no H in Sara. I can tell you that Sarah is Hebrew and means princess while Sara is Spanish and means pretty and in considered more edgy and modern. Still though, people prefer Sarah due to it's history in most holy scriptures.
Well, with Hebrew it gets complicated because there is no official Romanization so like kabbalah, cabala, qabalah and other variations are all technically correct.
@@katsuki427 sara doesn't mean pretty in spanish.
Pretty is Bonito/a
@@akai4942 I apologize, I meant Spanish variation. I know very well that Sara does not directly translate in Spanish to pretty but the Spain Spanish while trading would spread the Hebrew name Sarah to Sara.
Part of the problem with English spelling is caused BECAUSE people are writing vowels which actually change between every accent. There's far more consistency of consonant pronunciations, even between US and UK - skedule and shedule aka schedule being one example of an exception that springs to mind.
I'm not sure the "R" in "iron" is silent. Have you tried being American?
Yeah, it's kinda the 'o' that's silent. (I-ern)
It's ion😂
Did you mean eirn?
That one has never made sense to me. We should just spell it “ieorn” or something. Technically, he used the same “r” most Brits use with preceding vowels before a consonant. We Americans lean into the “r” as a full-fledged consonant, like civilized people (sorry about the “zed”, Limeys)
Depends on the accent. Non-rhotic accents keep the r in " iron " silent. In fact, in non-rhotic accents like Boston English, most British accents and some southern accents, the Rs in words like " car " " barely " " hear\ here " " more " and " standard " are silent so those words are rendered as " cah " " belly\ bayuly " he\ heyuh " " moouh \ maw \ moe " and " standud ".
Silent letters are aesthetic. It doesn’t affect the pronunciation of the word, it just looks better on paper.
Is the "s" or "c" silent in "scent"?
This will keep me up at night :/
You don't stretch out the beginning of the word?
It's the c.
Neither is silent, they both produce the same sound
The c is silent
@@Ggdivhjkjl ☝comment doesn't pass the smell test
Agnostic came to mind where the "g" is not silent before the "n"
Amanda What usage of “agnostic” would you pronounce the “g” in English?
@@giustobuffo a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God. Dictionary translation. Where I live in England, at least, we pronounce the "g"
I recognize this example.
Amanda Grice right, we would pronounce it that was in the state’s as well. Do you hear people who don’t pronounce the “g”?
I was thinking of "signature" being a prime example.
2:12 The d in hedge makes it a soft sound, if it was spelt hege it would be pronounced Heej
3:50 The e in Love is silent and not a diacritic letter, Love isn't pronounced Loe-v
5:31 It's not pronounced Lik-tuhn-shtine, it's pronounced Li-sch-tuhn-shtine
8:41 It was originally pronounced Kuh-nie-sch-t
I always find digraphs to be a bit odd in the English language, specifically TH, since they can effectively be replaced with other characters. This actually includes the Eth that you mentioned at the end, since it actually used to be part of the English alphabet.
Hell, English used to have 2 unique letters that were replaced by the digraph of T and H: Thorn (Þ, þ) for the harsher variant (ie. Thorn, wrath, methane) and Eth (Ð, ð) for the softer variant (ie. Father, there, and also Eth itself).
A lot of the pronunciations for the silent letters are based on accent. I live in the US and the “r” in iron definitely isn’t silent lmao
It wasn't even silent when he said it :'D
@@Ekami-chan Exactly! Smh
The "r" isn't silent, but it's not pronounced in the right place in the word either. You pronounce "iron" like "I urn" with the "r" coming AFTER the second vowel instead of before it.
The O is silent. It does have a use though. It helps show an accent occurs within the word.
we know lmao
With "tsunami", I actually pronounce the "ts" cluster, and so do many people I've talked to.
CJ Roth nice sona!
In Hebrew pronouncing TS together creats a (single) consonat presented by the letter צ.
That's how it's pronounced in Japanese too. To me it just sounds off when people say it as "soo-nah-mi".
I pronounce the t in ts as well. The same with the tsetse fly. I figure if I can say the ts at the end of the word pots easily enough, then I should be able to provide ts at the beginning of a word. And I do.
Out of the multiple thousands I have met, I have heard only ~5 people in my life pronoun it that way. Your the minority/ odd one out.
OMG.... Monty Python was right when they said "Kaniget" instead of knight? Wow! Mind blown! Lol
I wish but Theres no vowel in "kn"
That was the point of that skit. The French were mocking the English.
Silly English kanigit. Le cavalier..
@@Chad_Eldridge the one where they were talking to the Frenchmen in the castle.
No. That's not at all how it was pronounced. "Knight" was originally pronounced (k'NEE-kht). Same with "night" without the K
i love your videos. your discussion of knight bothered me, though. you cited knight as having come from knecht; that is not true. knight came from Middle English knight, knyght, kniht, from Old English cniht (“boy, servant”), from Proto-Germanic *knehtaz. knecht came from Middle High German knëht, from Old High German kneht, from Proto-Germanic *knehtaz. in this way, while the words are indeed cognates, knight did not come from knecht. knight used to be pronounced more like it's spelled, with the "ch" making that contemporary "german ch--sound" as in /knɛçt/
in fact, you neglected to say that a lot of those silent letters are artifacts from a time when they were indeed pronounced in english. even a lot of those words with the letter e at the end once had the e pronounced. the great vowel shift is the biggest culprit for our weird spelling, in my opinion.
I believe you are correct. At the time there were no rules for spelling, so people spelled words the way they sounded. Of course, this resulted in some odd texts, like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with the word "read" spelled three different ways on one page! (read, reed, rede...)
When printing came along, the typesetter tended to settle on one way and eventually custom won out, with some (to our current eyes) oddly spelled words.
That bothered me as well. Great comment!
Fun fact:
The 'gh' wasn't always silent, it used to be used to make a sound like the one made by the ch in the word 'loch' or the German 'ich', which appeared in words like 'daughter' and 'knight' in old English. Since then the pronunciation has changed, but the spelling hasn't, leaving us with the gh usually being silent or making a 'f' sound.
This is why a lot of English words are spelled in funny ways, they used to be pronounced one way, and were spelled accordingly, but since then the pronunciation has changed, however the outdated spelling stays.
"When we brought 津波 into our language, we kept the spelling." 🤔
When learning Japanese, I saw it written as つなみ all the time, which would be transcribed like he spelled it. I don't know whether that's just common these days or done because the Kanji are outside the beginner's subset.
@@anlumo1 Romanizations of Japanese have existed for a long time. It was convention, by the time the English adapted 'tsunami' into their language, that [ʦɯ] was written as 'tsu' in romanization, and because of that, the spelling stuck, even if the phonology didn't.
That's the Japanese word for tsunami in Kanji? Interesting that it didn't get adopted into Chinese. In Chinese, it's 海啸 (literally: sea howl).
(Note: I don't know which word came first. Maybe the two countries came up with the two words independently.)
“A silent r in iron” excuse me? Is that just a British pronunciation or something?
i say iron like i-ern but other people say iron like i-ron or i-ren
@@marcaldovino264 As a history major I've never heard people speak of an 'i r o n' age.
It’s pronounced often in England as ion, like the charged particle.
In Scotland you do get more of the R, and sometimes, not as often as it used to, rolled R’s.
I say Iron like I-rn
Well, it's a non-rhotic pronunciation. So most brits, some New Yorkers Bostonians and some southerners drop the r.
In my dialect, a lot of the letters you said we're silent, I still pronounce. So this video seemed really odd
Can you give some examples?
What dialect is that?
Jonathan Holmes I pronounce the i in parliament
As a midwestern American, a lot of those silent Bs arent silent.
@@crait the A in Critically. Most African speakers would include it
“Colonel”
Silent Os, test we pronounce the first L like it’s an R.
“Psychic”
Silent P, only in English. As the Greeks who came up with that world WOULD pronounce that P. Like the Greek letter Psi (Ψ).
“Iron”
Silent R. Huh? Is that a British thing? Here in the States, we pronounce the R (but not the O).
Bhutan, Thailand, Ghana, those AREN’T silent Hs to the native speakers. You do pronounce those Hs. For Liechtenstein, the Ch is a digraph. Just not one English speaker can’t pronounce without learning it (it sounds similar to the Sh sound).
One more thing, many of these words are loaned from other languages, where the letters are actually “auxiliary” as you’ve explained. For instance, “nudge” is of French origin, where the D is added to prevent the G from sounding like “French Js.” For others, it’s actually not silent. “Hallelujah,” the J is actually a y-sound to English ears. (All Js are Ys in many other European languages.)
Additionally with Colonel, we say it as "Kern-ul" or "Kern-ol" or "Kern-al". Sometimes we'll say it like "Kern-nil" too though.
This was examining the silent letters of the English language. You're completely correct, but they did say this was only English.
The silent r thing is not exclusively British. Australians, Bostonians, some New Yorkers and people from a few areas of the American south also have silent r after vowel sounds.
I love how you made a whole video because you just got amazed learning about Silent Letters.
This has definitely been my favorite video of yours, very well put together
Technically the word Liechtenstein is written like it is because in German the CH sound is a proper sound. The word for Daughter in German is Tochter and the word for Laugh is Lachen and although in english the „gh“ sound isn’t used anymore in German it’s still in use. You can compare it with the „ch“ of Loch Ness :)
Silent E! He changes cub into a cube. Silent E! He changes tub into a tube. He changes twin to twine, he changes can into a cane. And this brave man must stop him before he strikes again.
Letter-man!
Cub to ciub, tub to tiub, twin to twain, can to cein. That's the dumbest thing about English.
A is pronounced "ei"
E is pronounced "i"
I is pronounced "ai"
O is pronounced "əu"
U is pronounced "iu"
How does any of this make sense. Especially a not being pronounced with a
"I can't read this. It has silent E's." -Officer Barbrady
The R in "iron" isn't silent; it just seems out of place.
Ironic !
Where I'm from, we pronounce the b at the end of words, like bomb and thumb. We also say the r in iron and l in folk.
1:43 KGB
I see you Patrick
"a silent O in kernel" - yup, that's what makes this word's pronunciation sound off :))
Colonel
@@RRansomSmith yup, it's pronounced just like 'kernel'. It's not just silent letters, it's a whole combo of other magic going ons :)
@@medutz also "lieutenant" being pronounced as "left-tenant" despite not being spelled "leftenant"
The "YO" in "YOU" is silent
No it's not
The O is
@@RRansomSmith says u 😁
Yu.
Knight isn’t a borrowed word from German. It’s a cognate of the German word. Also, in English it was originally spelled with c instead of a k.
kokofan50 -- Isn't it from Anglo-Saxon? People often get mislead by the terms "German" and "Germanic".
uekiguy, it’s from proto-west-Germanic, the language English, German, and Dutch evolved from. You’re very right about people mixing up German and Germanic. I know it’s just a couple letters, but it makes a lot of difference.
@@kokofan50 -- Ah, thank you, my friend.
H can be silent sometimes in English such as in Hour and Hono(u)r. In Spanish, however, it’s silent all the time, with the J making the usual H sound instead.
The Spanish J letter is a harder H than the normal one.
In some oral varieties of Spanish , some h do make a subtle aspirated sound in some words , often in those which in latin used to have an f , it is like if it was frozen in an intermediate state while muting from f to h . My gaditanian husband says harto y harina whith a subtle aspiration.
2:10 No, C makes the S-sound like the S before it.
2:12 No, J is made up of two sounds: D, then ZH.
2:25 No.
2:28 Q makes the K-sound.
2:29 It's pronounced "iorn".
J isn't made up of two sounds, it's made up of one sound that starts like D and is released as ZH. It's called an affricate
It's great that you posted this! My oldest (6) is learning to read and learned digraphs last week, including the word "thumb". He asked me why the B is silent at the end and I didn't know what to tell him!
Tell him that at one point it was sounded, but language evolved and people's speech habits stopped bothering to do so.
The H in Lichtenstein, in german ch c sound
ch and c are different sounds
ch is like "k'h" or sometimes a very tight hissing "h" sound. sometimes however it does a weird trill in the back of the throat, where you push your tongue on your hard palate and flap it very quickly
How do you say the kj sound in kjellberg?
@@carultch like ky
@@carultch like a harsh "ch"
It sounds like the Russian "Х" as in "хочешь" (khočeš') or "хуй" (khuj)
There's also the silent 'i' in aluminium - at least for Americans
[Because people kept on missing the '\s' in the read more section, this comment is *sarcastic* ]
we don't spell it like that (aluminum)
Australians say it as a-lu-min-i-um.
Real men spell and say it _aluminium_ >:3
Should people who don't pronounce all of the letters in place names like "Featherstonhaugh" really be criticizing how others pronounce words? The same people who remove the "r" from the pronunciation of some words and add an "r" to the pronunciation of words ending in a vowel.
its not silent cause it aint even spelled
"Silent R in Iron"
*My whole life is a lie*
Lots of silent letters in Irish.
Your name is Patrick, my son's middle name is Pádraig. That can either be pronounced "PAW-dreg" or "PAW-reg", with the d being silent. D's (and G's) in the middle of Irish words and names are often silent.
The “A” and “E” in “are” are silent...
I don't know if you're joking or not, but technically, the 'a' isn't silent.
The a is unvoiced, so it might seem to be silent.
kokofan50 R is pronounced are
@@kokofan50 the a is voiced, though. It's more of an a to r diphthong.
Technically, the A isn’t. I’ll just ask you to spell “R,” instead.
without the H in the country names those words would not sound the same in those languages.
I can see how you have difficulties with "ch" in German. The "h" in Liechtenstein is not silent. It contributes to a new sound. Yes, they speak German over there. And I am glad someone found the connection between knight and Knecht. In semantics it is a matter of elevation or demotion, always depending on your point of view. (Please, practice "ch". I did the same with "qaf" in Arabic)
I respectfully disagree that the "L" in "folk" is silent. At least the way I say it.
agree
@@MrJaw0214 agree, I m german though.
Without silent letters there wouldn’t be a difference between the words knight and night
Or Nit lol
And yet, how many distinct, disparate definitions do the words "ball" or "fire" have?
I had a ball at the ball when the man threw me the ball.
I got so mad at my boss when he said, "I have to fire you." I envisioned setting him on fire or yelling "Fire!" to the line of gun-wielding executioners.
No letters to indicate different meanings there. So... do we need the K in knight or could we get used to seeing the phrase "night in shining armor at night" and think nothing of it?
@@matthewwaterhouse9925 or should that be "nite in shining armer"
In that case it makes sense, but for words like psycho, it does not.
My ears started bleeding at the pronunciation of „Knecht”
Silent letters are very common in Danish too. There're letters that're never pronounced, letters that fall out of the language when it's spoken quickly, and letters that fall out of the words in certain dialects.
The word "valg" has a silent G, "havde" has a silent V, "tønde" has a silent D along with the D in "mand"
When speaking quickly, the word "ikke" is often pronounced as "ik", and in some dialects it's just pronounced "æ"
Great work overall, as usual, but I have to correct you on something. Modern English "knight" didn't come from German. It came from Old English "cniht," which shares a common ancestor with what would become modern German "Knecht." To say that English got its "knight" from German's "Knecht" is a bit like saying you descended from your cousin instead of your grandfather.
In fact, German has had relatively little influence on English, with most of the similarities explained by their common origins rather than any exchange between the two after their divergence. The major influences on English (aside from the Anglo-Saxon core, of course) are French, Latin, classical Greek, and Old Norse.
You say that G is always silent when followed by N; if only there were some way I could SIGNAL that you were incorrect.
Perhaps I could send you a letter, in which of course I would include my SIGNATURE.
Of course, it may be some time before I am able to write such a letter. First, I would have to get rid of this HANGNAIL.
I raise my hands up in RESIGNATION (a word which was actually part of the video segment on Inert Letters (czcams.com/video/rJ0dAyyPiao/video.html)).
@@wswanberg Where in "hangnail" do you pronounce the g?
@@shroomyesc
the digraph "ng"
5:30 actually, you just pronounce liechtenstein wrong. Its pronounced german ch (like the noise cats make when they are angry)
I feel that for a lot of silent letters, although they themselves are not pronounced as taught in Primary 1, alter the surrounding letters by their presence. It alters the shape of your mouth if you pronounce the words correctly.
For example, if I were to say 'NUM' (in in num pad) the M sound would end abruptly as it forms a single syllable.
In 'NUMBER' it flows into the second syllable as my mouth position at the end of pronouncing M is the same as beginning B, this bleeds the syllable together preventing a hard pause between them.
WIth 'NUMB' there is again the softer hold on that mouth position at the end of the word, as if I am going to bleed into the second syllable, but it never materialises.
Remember, just like we only use the article "a" before words beginning with consonants and "an" before words beginning with vowels we ALSO pronounce "the" as "thuh" before words beginning with consonants and as "thee" before words beginning with vowels.
This may explain the silent "C" in RAP...
?
Big yikes for the "Knecht" pronunciation ^^ it would be [knɛçt] instead of [knɛtʃ] but keep up the good work! :D
As well as that, I'm pretty sure, "knight" was pronounced, "[knixt]".
@@gnarzikans Sorry about that, what I meant was was, not is.
Hah. Try explaining how to pronounce the x and ç to English speakers!
I’m noticing people calling me out on the usage of these sounds in English. I get the gist now. No need to tag me. Thank you.
Yeah, that one really bothered me the most.
Please, please get your pronunciation right and learn the IPA. @Name Explain
@@lewatoaofair2522 /ç/is at the start "huge" for most English speakers and /x/ can be found in "Loch" as in Loch Ness
I remember hape-nee being a common pronunciation of half penny when I was a kid back in early nineteen-fifties London.
australian english speaker here -- fyi i pronounce the "dj" in "adjacent". i would'nt say "ajacent". love your work. thank you!
In American English, we write "draught" as "draft", avoiding those silent letters.
You also take the u out of a lot of words ending in our. e.g. colour becomes color.
Draught means a shortage of water in nature.
@@SWLinPHX No, that's 'drought'. Very similar spelling, but not quite the same.
@@InventorZahran Oops, you're right. I knew that but had a brain hiccup. 🤪
NE: Lists examples of silent letters from every letter in the alphabet.
"Sorry if this was boring."
Me: "That... was... aweseome..."
I'm teaching English in Russia and your first sentence made me laugh because that's how they sound
In the U.S., "draught" is spelled "draft". But "laughter" is spelt the same. Also I think the U.S. should start using "spelt" instead of "spelled", less letters to write/type, which save space and characters.
No. People just pronounce it incorrect.
You actually pronounced the "a" in critically and the "d" in hedge in this video. I'd argue that the "c" and "u" in lacquer are the actual silent letters, as it is a hard K and not a soft K. The "r" in iron is actually pronounced in my Middle American accent, it just is on the wrong side of the "o".
I sometimes also pronounce some of the other silent letters in your example words, but the only one I do non-ironically is folk (as a sort of emphasis that I'm not saying a certain vulgar word).
I've pronounced the "t" in tsunami ever since I started familiarizing myself with Japanese (and many English dictionaries I've found actually do claim that it should be pronounced). It helps that no one laughs at you for doing so, like they would for pronouncing the "p" in psychology.
Keep in mind *just in Europe alone* from Caesar (Latin "Emperor") we've got Kaiser & Kaizer in Germanic, and Csar, Czar, Tsar & Tzar in Russian, and "See-sar" in Modern English, so the "ts" in "tsunami" isn't all that odd to pronounce in a manner like the "ts" in Tsar, in diphthong manner.
French has words like oiseaux (birds). That one in particular has one each of AEIOU, and somehow it gets pronounced like Wa-Zo? Not sure if they count as silent, but definitely screwy...
They aren't silent
oi=wa and eau=o
Only the final x is silent.
Dude, in French, nothing is pronounced like it’s spelled.
@@harrispinkham yes it is.
When you learn the rule of pronunciations of diagraphs and trigraphs, french becomes more consistent than English. So with spelling, you can always know how a word is pronounced but with pronunciation you can't know how a word is spelled.
@@rasho2532 half the letters aren't pronounced... or get reduced
@@rasho2532 Being more consistent than English is a seriously low bar to set. I wonder if there's any language that's worse?
In French, ''E'', the most common letter, is silent at the end of a word (mer=sea & mère=mother but both are pronounced the same). The ''H'' without a ''C'' to make the ''ch'' sound is also usually silent. ''S'' and ''T'' at the end of a word are also mostly silent. Many are artefacts of Latin origins. But at least it's pretty consistent, so no ''ough' problem for new learners however. Great video!
H is often silent because it isn’t a consonant or vowel, but a hasperat, because it is just breathing out so it’s easy to ignore when pronouncing
I think all Occidental languages need to respell some words.
But by whose pronunciation? That's why spelling reform has never happened on a language-wide scale (for English), only regional scales. In order to regularize spelling, you would have to first get rid of regional accents, and I think the only way that happens is if due to popular culture, everyone converts to speaking vanilla American English. I don't think spelling reform would happen even then.
I guess it depends on your accent as I have pronounced or heard pronounced the A in critically, B in bomb, D in hedge, L in folk, R in iron, W in wreck, and Y in payer. And in certain vernaculars the second A in parliament is silent and the I is pronounced, par-lee-ment. There's more, but I'll leave that here. I think accent dictates how silent letters work a lot more than the shared language does. Of course, there are also cultural differences with the u in British colour being silent and not present in the American spelling of color.
A lot of silences can differ depending on dialect, like your r in iron example. Also, I wouldn't count a letter making the same sound as the previous letter as a silence.
Great video, keep it up 🤗
2:08 Some people say the "a" in critically
My friend from the Carribean pronounces -cally at then end of words as 2 syllables. cal-ly. While we North Americans slur it to -cly..
Umm many of the "silent letters" is just an accent.
For instance payer the y is not silent everywhere. Some places it is pronounced pay-yer. Or Hugh/herb some places pronounce the H
Australia, New Zealand and the UK pronounces the 'H'. I know Americans don't but I'm not sure about Canadians
@@TheAlps36 we definitely pronounce the H in Canada in theses examples
The gh is preceived silent in Hugh.
Herb/herbivore can be pronounced either way. It is a person by person case in my part of the US.
@@TheSpiritombsableye the gh at the end of Hugh can be pronounced as a softish H sound. Kinda as a tail sound at the end of the name. Or completely left off and sound more like hew or yew
Great video, name explain 👍
Hot take: fate should be spelled faet. I feel like the a+e+t sound together makes more sense then a+t+e. Also applies to cove (coev) but not have (that should just be hav).
In the word Scent
Does "C" is silent or "S"
P.S This is not my joke
Spinel Who 😮
At least your not taking credit for that "joke".
Neither. they are both said, but very quickly and blended together. Scent, Sent, Cent are all pronounced slightly differently.
Maybe it's both but neither at the same time.
None, C is read as an S sound when it is in front of an I or E
As an American I actually say the “L” in folk
And the p in raspberry
What?
Where do people pronounce it like that? Im in south PA and I've never heard "folk" pronounced like that.
Mark Daniel I’m American and I say the “L” in folk but I drop the “P” in raspberry
Ginger Ale So do you say “foke” like yoke instead of folk like yolk?
I’m from Louisiana and I don’t pronounce the “p” in raspberry
English is a sort of scavenger language. Yes, we make up words ourselves occasionally, but on the whole, English meets another language and goes, "You have an eloquent way to express a thought with only one or two words. We're taking it."
2:06 I have been speaking English for 15 years as a second language and somehow I was pronouncing a lot of these words incorrectly. Thank you for correcting.
Britain = "brit-TIN"
"ai" is a digraph but it is pronounced "ay" like in Brain so Britain has "a" as a silent letter.
It's pronounced brit-an
@@SamButler22
I always pronounced it "brit-TIN" and I even live in the United Kingdom while not being a Brit myself. I am a European living in another European country not my own European country.
We, Filipinos, pronounce the "ts" in 'tsunami".
It's not really a silent letter. Most English speakers just can't be bothered to say it the proper Japanese way.
I'm Canadian and I pronounce the TS in tsunami. I think it varies from person to person depending on how much they are enunciating
@Dominick Poole My point is that even within a given dialect the pronunciation can change - and even within a given individual. If I'm speaking quickly and casually I might say "sunami", but if I'm speaking more slowly and properly I would say "tsunami"
I would expect that you would, considering the word was probably introduced to the Philippines by Japanese speakers, not English speakers.
@@mal2ksc I am not surr about how it was introduced in our language. Most probably vi English. However, we know that it is a Japanese word. And we prnounce the "ts" like a /tʃ/.
The H in Bhutan isn't silent. The letter is pronounced with an aspiration. "B" and "Bh" are separate consonant sounds in this part of the world, which they aren't in English.
Awesome video!!!! When growing up in USA during 1960s-70s and going to school, would always get into trouble whenever asking my ENGLISH teachers why the heck there are all these unnecessary letters in words and why are they not pronounced!!! Constantly in trouble, so just figured they did not know either. What is really baffling are those words that start with PS or PT - take away the P and those words just do not look correct.
"Knigget" (the medieval pronunciation) also makes me recall Monty Python. Anyone else?
As a speaker of a language that has NO silent letters, and since I learned English in large part through reading instead of speaking or hearing, I often pronounce those silent letters as that seems logical to me. Thanks for explaining this to me. I think that English should be standardized and reformed, although it is not easy in modern times. Maybe marking the beginning of the text so that the reader knows if it is reformed or old, we could avoid confusion. Or by adopting another alphabet system. There are many languages that switched from one writing system to another. That would allow English to reform its writing while avoiding confusion.
You can't really claim that Lichtenstein contains a silent "H" then go on to say that Knecht has no silent letters - they're both German words using the same "CH" digraph 😊 - Oh, and I take issue with claiming that English knight comes from German Knecht; both words descend from a common Germanic ancestor.
I so agree about the so-called English silent "E" not actually being silent, despite Tom Lehrer's eponymous song. Speaking of whom, why do we almost invariably spell Thomas with that pesky "H" in it, but the diminutive Tom without? LOL
The "h" in Liechtenstein is pronounced in German forming the "ch" sound as expected. It's only in English were the "h" falls silent.
Much of the silent letters in the English language are the result of the significant impact of Norman French which infiltrated the English language of the past during and after the Norman conquest of England in 1099.
Christian O. Holz so it was the French’s fault
I was pronouncing so many of these.
I pronounce the Bs at the end of words.
In Spanish the H is always silent. That's why the greeting Hola, sounds like ola instead of Holland.
I would like to add the reasons for silence in Bhutan and Thailand (actually also in Phuket, Dharma).
Base on Thai pronunciation, those are sounds which don't exist in English but Thai and Sanskrit languages. So Thai academics just just write in different way to represent their original different alphabet such as:
Bh: For 'P' sound with different in pronunciation in its original language.
Th: is assigned for 'T' sound while T is used for broken between 't' and 'd' sound.
Ph: is assigned for 'P' sound while P is used for broken between 'p' and 'b' sound.
Dh: is used to represent special 'T' sound with different original alphabet writing.
So, in this case, they're not really silent but they're designed to correspond with their original writing system.
I like to think that the “H” in the “GH”s & such being pronounced Softly like “Hot”…
Night vs Knight: Knights have Knowledge while Nights don’t.
but my knowledge is most powerful at night
And at the ending of _Star [Trek/Wars] vs DC&Marvel_ , Deadpool says “Say Good Night Batman” & Batman replies “I’m not a Good Knight” . . . too bad you missed it 111% of it, @@parabolaaaaa4919
The "H" is always silent in Spanish
Also u in gui/gue and qui/que
Except when there's a "C" before it.
@@lerquian1970 That's because g doesn't always make a GUH sound in Spanish. So the u is there to reinforce it, to stop it from making the "huh" sound it would make, when followed by e or i.
I think G should always make a guh sound. Unlike C, that can have K universally make its hard sound, G has no backup letter for its hard sound. Let J do the job of making the huh sound in Spanish, or the juh sound in English, or the zhuh sound in French
@@victorcabanelas -or in neighbour and weigh- :P
A lot of words with GH in them used to be pronounced with a guttural sound at the back of the throat, and over time English dropped the pronunciation of that sound but kept the spelling because reasons. Same for a lot of the silent letters -- the k in front of knife, knight (as you mentioned), etc, and even the B at the end of some words.
That's weird, I always thought that the word Bomb ALWAYS have a loud B at the end, never heard that in english. At least in swedish the B is not silent at the end of the word Bomb.
In swedish we have some words that are silent, for example, like in english the P is silent when it's followed with an S as in psykologi (psychology), psalm and psykiater (psychiatrist), and D is silent in words followed by a J, like in Djungel (Jungle), Djur (Animal), Djup (deep/depth), Djävul (the devil, also sometimes the curseword/insult jävel, similiar to "bastard", can be spelled with DJ) and Djärv (bold, not to be confused with järv which is wolverine), H is silent in a word or name with a T in front of it such as Thomas, similiar to english (though unlike english ALL TH-words and names are prounced as T and not as an F, like in death, threat and through), CH is the same as with TH, just like in Christine, the term ledsen (sad or sorry) has the D slient but has the S doubled so it becomes "less-n" (similiar to listen).
Even if this falls into the category of american vs british english, despite the fact that like american spelling and pronounciation better than english in most cases, when it comes to "herb" I prefer the british version WITH a loud H as in the nickname Herb, as I find "err-b" very silly and nonsensicle.