Scienze dell’Educazione e della
Formazione
a.a. 2010-11
Silent Letters
letters and syllables you don’t
hear or say but are written!
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Some unstressed sylllables disappear
altogether in spoken English – this is
always a source of trouble for non-native
speakers.
Examples of ‘long’ words that
become ‘short’ when spoken
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Comfortable
Different
Interesting
Interested
Laboratory
raspberry
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Corporate
Literature
Procedure
Temperature
dictionary
Marvellous
Silent ‘k’
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‘k’ before ‘n’ at the beginning of a word
is silent
know knee knock
knight knickers
knife knit
knuckle
knot
Silent ‘p’
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A ‘p’ before an ‘s’ at the beginning of a
word is silent
psychology
psyche
psychiatrist
psychodrama
psycholinguistics
psychoanalysis
psychopath
psychedelic
Silent ‘h’
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The following words have a silent ‘h’ (they
function as a vowel – eg. an hour
honest
honour,
honesty,
honourable
hour
heir
Silent ‘r’
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final ‘er’ is pronounced [Ə]
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e.g. teacher father mother further
driver computer master
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The ‘r’ in ‘ar’ [a:] lengthens the vowel
eg. bar car far star start cart art
Other Silent letters
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
final ‘n’ after ‘m’ eg. column autumn
‘e’ in ‘ed’ eg. walked phoned stopped
‘gh’ before ‘t’ eg. daughter night eight
an ‘l’ or an ‘r’ that precede a consonant
after a pure vowel e.g. calm form warm
the ‘t’ in cluster ‘stle’ eg. castle, whistle
bustle
Silent ‘e’
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1.
2.
3.
4.
A final ‘e’ which follows cluster ‘single
vowel + single consonant is silent.
BUT it makes the single vowel say its
name.
can vs cane man vs mane
bit vs bite kit vs kite
tub vs. tube cub vs cube
mop vs mope cop vs cope
Glottal stop
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The glottal stop, or more fully, the
voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of
consonantal sound used in many spoken
languages.
The symbol in the International Phonetic
Alphabet that represents this sound is ʔ. It is
called the glottal stop because the technical
term for the gap between the vocal folds,
which is closed up in the production of this
sound, is the glottis.
Italian version
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L'occlusiva glottidale sorda è una
consonante, rappresentata con il simbolo [ʔ]
nell'alfabeto fonetico internazionale (IPA).
Essa viene anche chiamata comunemente
colpo di glottide (in inglese glottal stop, in
francese coup de glotte). Un colpo di glottide
è realizzato quando le corde vocali si
chiudono bruscamente per fermare il flusso
dell'aria e immediatamente dopo vengono
riaperte.
Examples of words
pronounced with a glottal stop
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Commonly the ‘dd’ and ‘tt’ in the clusters
-ddle and -ttle are pronounced with a glottal stop
middle
kettle
settle
little
fiddle
paddle
saddle