Silent Letters in English

Silent letters in English

In this entry we are going to look at a common pronunciation problem that we see in our online English classes via Skype, caused by the vast number of silent letters in English.
 

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When you learn English, it is so important to remember that in most words there are letters that are not pronounced at all. Some words have two or three silent letters, and there are words (such as queue) in which almost all the letters are silent. The pronunciation of queue is, in fact, exactly the same as that of the letter Q, so we can therefore say that all the letters except the first one are silent.

Below, we are going to look at some examples of which letter can be silent.

Don’t despair, and remember that English is not like more phonetic languages such as Spanish or Italian: written English is almost a different language to spoken English!

It is therefore vitally important to learn the pronunciation of each word as you learn how to spell it. If not, you will know how to write the word, but when you try to say it you will have difficulties making yourself understood — a very common problem among speakers of English as a second language.

Every day we post phrasal verbs and expressions we teach in our online English classes, on Facebook and Twitter. We also explain many of the common mistakes speakers of English as a foreign language make when they are speaking English.

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