English Orthography - Silent Letters

Silent Letters

Further information: Silent letter

Some letters do not provide any information about contemporary English pronunciation. For example, in Old and Middle English was an allophone of /f/ occurring between vowels. The deletion of historical final schwas (weak vowels) at the end of words such as give and have phonemicized /v/, but the now-silent ⟨e⟩ remained at the end of most /v/-final words. Words spelled with final ⟨v⟩ such as rev and Slav remain comparatively rare.

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Famous quotes containing the words silent and/or letters:

    “While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,
    The only son is dead.

    But the mother needs to be better,
    She with thin form presently drest in black,
    By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,
    In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,
    O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and
    withdraw,
    To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.”
    —Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

    “This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,
    Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
    Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
    The shop at the corner, the girl next door.”
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)