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Silent Letters

Have you heard about silent letters before? Did you know that some letters that make up some words in English Language do not sound out when those words are pronounced? Some of those letters occur at the beginning, middle or ending of words. We are going to examine some of those words with such letters in this post.

1. Silent letters at the beginning of words: e.g. honour, honesty, hour, heir, etc. The letter 'h' in those words are silent and as such are not pronounced. Thus, one will hear 'onor', 'onesty', 'our' and 'air' whenever those words are pronounced.

2. Silent letters at the beginning and middle of words: eg. wrestle, whistle, castle, hustle, listen, debt, often, receipt, etc. The silent letters in these words are letters 'w', 'h', 'b', 'p' and 't'. Thus, in pronunciation we hear 'resl', wisl', 'casl', 'det', 'receet' and 'hosl'.

3. Silent letters at the ending of words: eg. condemn, solemn, lamb, comb, womb, tomb, bomb, depot, debris, 'debut', etc. In this example, the letters 'n', 'b', 't' and 's' occurring at the end of the words are not pronounced. Thus, one will hear: 'condem' 'solem', 'wum', 'tum', 'com', 'lam', bom', 'depo', 'debri', etc. 

We hope you will find the post useful.

We welcome your comments, observations and suggestions on the post.

Best regards!

From the Grammarstar team.

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