Learn English – term for the silent letters in a word

phoneticssilent-letters

Such letters are employed in spelling but are not pronounced, and English offers a wealth of examples more than any other language .

  • most final "b's" preceded by "m" (dumb, climb, thumb, etc)
  • most "k's" followed by "n" (knob, knight, knee, etc)
  • most "gh's" followed by "t" (night, thought, right, fight, etc)
  • most "l's" in "al" followed by "m" (calm, palm, almond – BrE, psalm, qualm, balm, alms, salmon, etc)
  • the "h" in certain words (hour, heir, honor, honest, ghost, exhausted, vehicle, etc)
  • etc.

Is there a phonetical term for them?

EDIT – The above examples have been given only for the sake of illustration. The question is about a phonetic term for silent letters.

Best Answer

Wikipedia references linguist Edward Carney's (Senior Lecturer in Phonetics at the University of Manchester) A Survey of English Spelling in this explanation on silent letters, so the names of these various terms are not standardized. He distinguishes between two types of 'silent letter': auxiliary and dummy:

  • Auxiliary letters, paired with another letter, constitute digraphs which represent a single distinct sound. These auxiliary letters are further classified into exocentric digraphs—where the collective sound of the digraph is different from the individual sound of each of its two letters. The individual letters are rarely considered silent because each letter contributes to the overall sound of the digraph. There are two categories of exocentric digraph:

    1. a phoneme with no single-letter representation, such as in consonants 〈ng〉 for /ŋ/ as in sing, 〈th〉 for /θ/ as in thin or /ð/ as in then, diphthongs 〈ou〉 in out or 〈oi〉 in point.
    2. a single-letter representation of a phoneme replaced with a digraph instead, such as 〈f〉 replaced by 〈gh〉 in enough or 〈ph〉 in physical

    —and endocentric digraphs, where the sound of the digraph is the same as that of one of its letters, which are classified into three groups:

    1. most double consonants, as 〈bb〉 in clubbed (but not geminate consonants, as 〈ss〉 in misspell because both s's contribute to the elongated /s/ phoneme)
    2. the discontiguous digraphs, whose second element is "magic e" (silent 〈e〉) , e.g. 〈a_e〉 in rate, 〈i_e〉 in fine
    3. others, such as 〈ck〉 (which is in effect the "doubled" form of 〈k〉); 〈gu〉 as in guard, vogue; 〈ea〉 as in bread, heavy, etc.
  • Dummy letters are letters that have no relation to neighboring letters and no correspondence in pronunciation, and are classified into two groups:
    1. inert letters, which are sounded in a cognate word: e.g. 〈n〉 in damn (〈n〉 is pronounced in damnation); 〈g〉 in phlegm (〈g〉 is pronounced phlegmatic); 〈a〉 in practically (〈a〉 is pronounced in practical)
    2. empty letters, which never have a sound, e.g. 〈w〉 in answer, 〈h〉 in Sarah, 〈s〉 in island, 〈b〉 in subtle, the 〈t〉 in ballet. These are the "truest" form of silent letter.

Other forms of silent letters:

  • consonant cluster silent letters: silent 〈th〉 in asthma

  • spurious silent letters: silent letters that are added to adopted words post factum to more accurately reflect even earlier origins, such as

    • silent 〈b〉 in debt and doubt (from French dette, doute) was inserted to match Latin cognates like debit and dubitable
    • silent 〈s〉 inserted in isle (Norman French ile, Old French isle, from Latin insula; cognate to isolate) and then extended to the unrelated word island.
    • 〈p〉 in ptarmigan was apparently suggested by Greek words such as pteron ('wing')

  • Non-rhotic 〈r〉 accents: 〈r〉 is silent in such words as hard, feathered

  • h-dropping accents: 〈h〉 is silent

  • silent letters in compound words: 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 Wikipedia section goes more in-depth on the purpose of silent letters and how they originate in words.