English Pronunciation: Silent 'e'

Hey, this is Bill. And I've got a nice  

basic English video for you here today. Now, I'm going to talk to you about silent ‘e’. 

Now, a silent letter is a letter  in a word that we don't say. 

It's just there. We write the word. 

We write the letter. But when we read  

the word, we don't say that letter. Now silent ‘e’, kind of a tricky one here. 

And I've got some examples to help you. Now, if you can remember your vowels:  

a, e, I, o , u Now each vowel has two different sounds. 

The short sound and the long sound. Well, silent ‘e’ is the letter ‘e’ that  

comes at the end of a word. But we don't say the ‘e’. 

The ‘e’ is just there to change the vowel sound. Let's take a look here and I'll show you. 

All right, now, I have this first word here. plan 

Okay, that's like ‘I have a plan for tomorrow’. Okay, so we know that a plan you make a plan, 

then if I do this, now it's not ‘planee’, no. 

Now it becomes, before it was short  ‘a’, plan, now, long ‘a’, ‘plane’. 

Okay like an airplane, all right. Look at the plane in the sky. 

Not plane. Now, it's long ‘a’, ‘plane’. 

Okay. Next thing going down here. 

We know this this is a man's name, ‘Tim’. Maybe you have a friend named Tim. 

Okay, but, and again, that  is sound, that's short ‘i’. 

But if we go ahead, and if  we put silent ‘e’ there, 

that means now ‘time’. Okay. 

What time is it? Alright. 

Not ‘Timee’. Again, silent ‘e’. 

Don't say it. But now you have the long ‘i' sound, ‘time’. 

Alright. If you remember,  

‘plan’ had the ‘a’ with short ‘a'. So does ‘cap’ with the /æ/ sound. 

Alright. So if we have ‘cap’ right now, 

let's go ahead and make ‘cape’. Alright. 

Now, we go to long ‘a’ with the ‘cape’ sound. 

Alright. Keep it going here. 

‘hop’ That's short vowel ‘o’. 

The /ɒ/ sound. Alright. 

So we have ‘hop’. I just did one. 

Alright. Now after ‘hop’, we put short ‘e’. 

Don't say ‘hoppee’. We say ‘hope’. 

It's like ‘I hope it does not rain tomorrow  because I'm going to the baseball game.’ 

Things like that. Alright. 

Before it was ‘hop’ now ‘hope’  with the long vowel ‘o’ sound. 

All right. Coming up here, we haven't done one with ‘u’ yet. 

Now long ‘u’, it's a little strange. It's /u/ okay. 

But more on that. so here's short ‘u’, ‘tub’. 

The short vowel ‘u’. Alright. 

From ‘tub’, we put silent ‘e’. Again, not ‘tubee’, we say ‘tube’. 

Alright. ‘A tube of toothpaste.’ 

Okay. Goes from ‘tub’ to ‘tube’. 

But still I'm not saying silent ‘e’. Alright. 

After that we come down to ‘bit’. ‘bit’ means a small piece. 

You know, ‘Can I have a bit of your bread?’ Well that's ‘bit’. 

Again, same as Tim. We have the /ɪ/, short vowel ‘I’. 

So again, silent ‘e’ comes in. ‘bite’ not ‘bitee’. 

‘bite’ Going on there. 

Now, you're probably getting a good idea  of it, so I just got two more for you. 

Again, here. You know, remember, /ʌ/. The short vowel ‘u’. 

/ʌ/ /ʌ/ 

/ʌ/ Well, here is ‘cut’. 

Well, we go ‘cut’ - now ‘cute’. Okay, we have ‘cute’. 

“Ah, look at the cute puppy.” Alright. 

And now, last one here. I've got ‘rip’. 

When you don't have scissors. All right. 

Well there's ‘rip’ and then there's ‘ripe’. Long vowel /eɪ/ with the silent ‘e’. 

So listen to me as I say these. We've got plane, time, cape,  

hope, tube, bite, cute, and ripe. Never did I say the ‘e’ because it's silent. 

It's just there to make a long vowel. Okay. I hope that was helpful. 

And I hope I see you again soon. Thank you very much.