Silent letters in English | Pronunciation | Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of this silent letter pronunciation series! Join me and #StayHome to practice some English!

Today I am sharing some commonly mispronounced words due to silent letters. This is PART 2 where we go from silent letters L through to W.

Make sure to turn on the transcript so you catch everything.

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back everybody to my pronunciation lesson on silent letters.

We're going to start with ‘l’ today.

Silent ‘L’

Okay

Let's talk about the silent ‘L’

Notice, I said there “let's talk” about the silent ‘L’

I didn't say ‘talk’

This is one of the most mispronounced ‘L’ sounds in the English language (for ESL learners anyway)

So, let's go through those words.

- talk

- walk

- chalk

It's not talk, it's tawk

It's not walk, it's wawk

It's not chalk, it's chawk.

The next set of ‘L’ words is the ‘ld’ sound.

The sound that you get in,

- would

- could

- should

(all those modal verbs)

So these are often mispronounced as well,

It's not should, it sh-ud

It's not could, it's cud

It's not would, it's wood

As you can see as well, it's actually much easier to pronounce when you just use the ‘ud’ sound.

The next silent ‘L’ is before an ‘f’ i.e. ‘lf’

As in,

- calf

-half

We don't actually pronounce the ‘l’

So,

It's not calf, it's caahf

It's not half, it's haahf

And the last set of silent ‘L’ words is when an ‘l’ comes before and ‘m’ i.e. ‘lm’

As in the words,

- salmon

- calm

So,

It's not salmon, it's sahmon

It's not calm, it's caahm

Silent ‘n’

Now, the 'n' sound is almost always pronounced in English except when it comes after an m i.e. ‘mn’

As in these words,

- autumn

- solemn

- column

So,

It's not autumn, it's autum

It's not column, its colum

Silent ‘p’

The silent p is not normally pronounced when it comes after an n, an s or a t i.e. pn, ps, pt

Like the words,

- pneumonia

- psychology

- receipt

Now, let's go through those words again.

It's not pneumonia, it's neumonia

It's not psychology or psychic, it's sychology or sychic

It's not receipt, its receit

Silent ‘r’

Now, let's move to the silent r

In the UK and often in Australia as well, the r is actually rarely pronounced when it comes after a vowel.

For example,

- far

- mother

- poor

- card

- work

It's more an Aussie accent I think but on the other hand, in America or Canada or Ireland,

the ‘r’s are always pronounced.

- far

- mother

- poor

- card

- work

So really, it depends on where you want to go and what accent you want to sound like.

Silent ‘s’

There are some fancy silent ‘s’s that we get from the French language.

Such as,

- bourgeois

- faux pas

- apropos

- chassis

- rendez - vous

And there's also that other strange silent s in the words,

- island

- isle

- islet

These words are often mispronounced, because most people think we should pronounce this ‘s’ but in fact, we never do.

Silent ‘t’

Next is the silent T.

Now, the English love their ‘t’, but they don't love pronouncing it so much, especially when it comes in the form of a ‘sten’ like,

- listen

- fasten

So let's go back to those words,

It's not listen, its lissen

It's not fasten, it's fassen

Likewise, when it comes in the form of ‘tle’

As in,

- castle

So,

It's not castle, its cassel

It's not apostle, its apossel

It's not wrestle, its wressel

And neither do we pronounce the ‘t’ in these words we imported from the French language again.

Such as,

- rapport

- ballet

- gourmet

Okay,

And here's a few more silent t's just for a good measure,

- christmas

- mustn't

And many English often drop the ‘t’ in the word,

- often

- soften

But you don't have to.

Some people pronounce it, some people don't.

Silent ‘w’

And last but not least is the Silent ‘w’, which we find in such words

As,

- whole

- sword

So,

We don't pronounce it whole, its hole

We don't pronounce it's sword, its so-erd

Bonus section

This is where I give you some words which don't necessarily have to do with silent letters, they're just always mispronounced.

For example,

The word

- promise

It's not promise, its promisse

- vegetable

It's not vegetable, it's veg-tahble

- months

We don't actually pronounce the ‘th’ in this,

It's munts

And another one is,

- women

Now, it spells women, but it's pronounced wimen

So, it's women for the plural of woman

Suffix ‘-ate’

Now, let's take the suffix ‘-ate’ which is actually pronounced different for adjectives and verbs.

So take for example,

Separate (adjective)

As you can hear, it's an ‘at’ sound.

However, the (verb) to separate, we use an 'eight' sound

So, as you can see, the pronunciation is quite different.

at- separate, if it's an adjective.

to separ-eight, if it's a verb.

Just to confuse you even more.

I really hope you enjoyed this lesson.

I hope you'll learn to pronounce some words that were maybe troubling you or maybe you found some words that you didn't know you were pronouncing wrong, but now you fix them.

If you have any other queries about words that you are having trouble pronouncing, just put them in the comments below.

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And we will see you very very shortly.

Bye Bye : )

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