Silent Letters in English

One of the noted difficulties of English spelling is a high number of silent letters. Edward Carney distinguishes different kinds of “silent” letters, which present differing degrees of difficulty to readers. In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word’s pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign U+2205 ∅ EMPTY SET. Null is an unpronounced or unwritten segment. The symbol resembles the Scandinavian letter Ø and other symbols.

Silent letters are letters that you can’t hear when you say the word, but that are there when you write the word. 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.

1. 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.
2. Silent letters help to show long vowels e.g. rid/ride
3. Silent letters help to show ‘hard’ consonants e.g. guest/gest
4. They can help to connect different forms of the same word e.g. resign/resignation

Here is a list of Silent Letters in different English words: