Silent Letters in English | Pronunciation | Part 1

I'm so glad you found this video! Now you can #StayHome and practice some English with me. Today I am sharing some commonly mispronounced words due to silent letters. This is PART 1 where we go from silent letters B through to K.

PART 2 is coming next week... Make sure to turn on the transcript if you're watching this video!

TRANSCRIPT

Hi everybody! Welcome back to English with Kathryn.

Every learner of English has made these pronunciation mistakes - Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.

It doesn't matter!

You've made them, I've heard them in my classes.

But today, we are going to fix them once and for all, so that you can sound more like a native speaker fast, and it's going to be easy.

Okay.

Well, the problem is that English contains many words with silent letters in them.

For example,

- know

- talk

- thumb

- autumn

It's annoying for you guys, I know.

English can be very very tricky and very frustrating, because it's not a phonetic language like Spanish - for example.

In Spanish, you can see a word and you can read it and try to guess the pronunciation.

But in English you can't do that, because it can lead to mispronunciations.

Even some native speakers have this problem sometimes, with less common words that they don't hear very often.

But don't worry!

I'm going to go through the mistakes learners make with common words.

Words that are used a lot in English.

So, at least you can be sure to get those ones right.

I'm going to pronounce each of these words the incorrect way first, and then the correct way.

And I want you to stop up the video, and try and repeat the correct way after me.

So mimic me.

So that you can feel the difference coming out of your own mouth.

Okay.

Are you ready?

Let's go!

Silent ‘b’

Okay

Let's start with the silent B.

Now, when we have ‘mb’ together in a word, we do not pronounce the ‘b’.

I'm going to pronounce these following words incorrectly first and then correctly.

So, stop the video and mimic me.

Incorrect Correct

bomb bom

tomb toom

climb clime

lamb lam

plumber plummer

Now also when we get ‘bt’ together we do not pronounce the ‘b’.

As in the words,

- debt

- doubt

So, I'll say it incorrectly

Incorrect Correct

debt det

doubt dout

As you can see,

It's much easier to say it without pronouncing the ‘b’.

Silent ‘c’

Next is the silent c.

The most fascinating thing about the silent c is that, it tends to be silent in such,

- scintillating sounds such as,

- scissors

- muscle

- science

And yet in some other words, the ‘sc’ sound is pronounced like a ‘k’ in,

- sceptic

- scar

- scare

Okay.

Let's go back to the incorrect pronunciation first and then I'll do the correct pronunciation.

Incorrect Correct

scintillating sintillating

scissors sizzors

muscle mussel

science sience.

Silent ‘d’

Next is the Silent ‘d’

Wait, wait a second!

There's a Silent ‘d’ in English?

Yes! In words such as,

- handbag

No no, we don't say,

- handbag

We say,

- hanbag

- The new Hermes handbag only set me back 1 million euros.

The same goes for the word sandwich

We don't really pronounce the ‘d’

We say,

- sanwich

Another word is handsome.

It's actually pronounced,

hansome

- handsome

Silent ‘gh’

Next up is the Silent ‘gh’ sound.

Now, the silent ‘gh’ is often in words like,

- drought

- through

- thorough

- daughter.

So, let's go back to those words again.

Drought

I can't even say it incorrectly, it's really difficult

Incorrect Correct

drought drout

thorough thurro

daughter dawter

Nah, it's impossible to say incorrectly, almost impossible.

So that's where the silent ‘gh’ is, but there are other words

where this ‘gh’ is actually an ‘f’ sound like in the word.

Incorrect Correct

cough cawf

laugh laf

These two very important words.

A lot of my students get those two wrong.

So remember this, gh is an f sound.

Silent ‘h’

Next up is the silent ‘h’

I live in France and I have a lot of French students who pronounce this ‘h’.

So this is for you guys.

- honour

- hour

- honest

So, let's go back to these words.

Incorrect Correct

honour onour

honest onest

heir air

Note that,

Because the H is silent, we should put an ‘an’ in front of the word

- an honest person

but an ‘a’ in front of hotel because we pronounce the H in hotel.

- a hotel

In some English accents like the cockney British accent,

The H is always dropped.

- I'm staying in a hotel.

- Gimme an hand!

Okay,

That probably wasn't a very good cockney accent, but as you can see they drop the H everywhere.

Other words with silent H s are,

- exhausted

So,

Incorrect Correct

exhausted exausted

vehicle vee-icle

exhilarating exilarating

Silent ‘k’

And last silent letter we have for you today is the Silent ‘k’.

Just follow this simple rule.

Whenever you have kn together, the k is not pronounced.

Like in the words,

- knee

- know

Incorrect Correct

knee nee

know no

knife nife

knitting nitting

knock nock

Thank you so much for joining me today.

If you like this video, click like and hit subscribe for more videos like this.

Actually, we’ll be doing the silent letters l to z next week.

So stay tuned for that.

Thanks again!

And see you next week.

Bye Bye : )

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