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The kn and gn letter combinations usually indicate a Germanic origin of the word. In Old English, k and g were not silent when preceding n . Cognates in other Germanic languages show that the k was probably a voiceless velar plosive in Proto-Germanic. For example, the initial k is not silent in words such as German Knecht which is a cognate of ...
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.
The sound of a hard g (which often precedes the non-front vowels a o u or a consonant) is usually the voiced velar plosive [ɡ] (as in gain or go) while the sound of a soft g (typically before i , e , or y ) may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language. In English, the sound of soft g is the affricate / dʒ /, as in general, giant ...
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 ...
For the distinction between [ ], / / and , see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. In French spelling, aspirated "h" (French: h aspiré) is an initial silent letter that represents a hiatus at a word boundary, between the word's first vowel and the preceding word's last vowel. At the same time, the aspirated h stops the normal ...
Category:Silent letters. Category. : Silent letters. Silent aleph and silent aliph / alif - see Silent letter#Semitic languages.
Reading by using phonics is often referred to as decoding words, sounding-out words or using print-to-sound relationships.Since phonics focuses on the sounds and letters within words (i.e. sublexical), [13] it is often contrasted with whole language (a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading) and a compromise approach called balanced literacy (the attempt to combine whole language and ...
H-dropping or aitch-dropping is the deletion of the voiceless glottal fricative or " H -sound", [h]. The phenomenon is common in many dialects of English, and is also found in certain other languages, either as a purely historical development or as a contemporary difference between dialects. Although common in most regions of England and in ...