5 common silent letters in English

Hi everyone.

In today’s video, I will talk about something

that confuses lots of language learners.

SILENT LETTERS. Shh.

The letters that appear in words that you don’t say.

Are you ready? Let’s go.

Okay, contestant number one.

The last word to spell is half, as in half an hour.

Yes. Okay, so

half.

H A F. Half.

Ooh, I am afraid that is incorrect.

The word half has a silent L there.

As I said before, a silent letter in a word is

one that is written, but not pronounced.

The English language uses quite a lot of silent letters.

And the reason for this is simple.

Languages change, evolve and borrow words

from other languages.

Today we will focus on five common silent letters.

K, W, B, L and T. Let’s see if you can help me.

Can you identify the silent letters in these words?

Say them out loud.

KNEE, KNOW, KNIGHT, KNIFE, KNOCK.

That’s right. The letter K is silent.

K is always silent whenever it is followed by N.

So, shh, don’t say it.

What about this group of words? Which is the silent letter?

WRITE, WRONG, WRAP, WRIST, WRESTLE.

We don’t say the W when it is at the start of a word before R.

Now, look at these words.

They all have the same silent letter, but which one is it?

THUMB, LAMB, CLIMB, DOUBT, DEBT.

B.

The letter B is often silent when it appears after M at the end of words.

And when it appears before a T at the end of a word.

Can you spot the silent letter here?

WOULD, SHOULD, CALF, HALF, TALK, WALK.

The letter L is often silent when it comes between a vowel

and a consonant, especially after A,

O and U.

Especially with the endings A L F, A L K, A L M, O L K and O U L D.

But this depends on the pronunciation of

the letters before.

The last group.

Which letter is not pronounced in these words?

CASTLE, WHISTLE, FASTEN, LISTEN, SOFTEN.

The letter T is silent when it’s surrounded by

consonants or consonant sounds.

Typically, it’s silent in words ending S T E N, F T E N,

or S T L E.

Understanding silent letters is as important for our spelling as it

is for our pronunciation.

Let’s recap what we learnt today.

Before we finish, I would like you to identify the silent letters in

this sentence and try to read it out loud with me.

I was talking to my sister, and I didn’t listen to my mum’s advice.

I climbed the tree and I hurt my wrist and my knee.

That’s all we have time for today. Did you find this video useful?

Can you think of any other example for each letter?

Leave your answers in a comment below.

Well, don’t forget to give us a thumbs-up and to Subscribe to the channel.

See you in the next video. This was Paula. Over and out.