English Pronunciation: Silent 'p'

Hi. This is Bill. And I'm here to help you with some pronunciation. 

Okay. Sometimes in English, we have  

words that have letters we don't pronounce. We call them silent letters. 

And, well, right here, I'm going to tell you  about how the letter P can sometimes be silent. 

Now, this happens when the word begins with  the letter P but then it is followed by another  

consonant. Now, this is when we ignore the letter  P and we do not actually pronounce that letter. 

It is only silent. So let's look right here. 

What I have in this word ,PN begins the  word, but I'm not going to say ‘pu-neumonia’. 

Okay. The P is silent. 

So all I'm going to say is ‘pneumonia’. Okay. 

And ‘pneumonia’ is a sickness  that you get in your lungs. 

That you know … when you're  breathing, you can get sick. 

It's more common in the wintertime. And it's kind of serious. 

So if you do have pneumonia, I hope you're  seeing a doctor, getting help for that. 

But please, the help I can give  you is don't say, “pu-neumonia.” 

Just say, “pneumonia” And remember it's a lung sickness. 

When you're breathing, it's  kind of like all right here. 

Okay. Now, the next one here. 

It's not ‘P-salm’. All right. 

Now, this, we just say ‘psalm’. Now, ‘psalm’ is, it's a part of the Bible. 

If you read the Bible, if you go to church, 

there's a part of the Bible  that's known as the Psalms. 

Like Psalm 1 Psalm 2 and it's just you know  information from the Bible and things like that. 

If you go to church, you probably  talk about that sort of thing. 

But what we'll talk about right now is  that you should pronounce it ‘psalm’. 

Remember, we have a silent  ‘p’, so just pronounce the ‘s’. 

Now, actually for the rest of these,  you notice PS is getting very common. 

Because as you look at the  next one here, ‘psychology’. 

Okay. Now,  

‘psychology’ is a subject that maybe you  or someone you know studies in school. 

‘psychology’ is all about how people think. It's like the way the mind works. 

Like why we think the way we do. That's the study of psychology. 

Again, not ‘p-sychology’, just ‘psychology’. So then, down here on the next one, 

similar to ‘psychology’, we have ‘psychiatrist’. Now, ‘psychiatrist’ is a doctor who is an expert  

of ‘psychology’. Okay. 

They've studied psychology all through university. They know psychology. 

They help people who want to talk to  someone about how they're thinking. 

You know, they want to see  a doctor about their mind, 

they see the psychiatrist. And he helps them with  

emotional problems or things like that. But, yes, so a psychiatrist studied psychology. 

Now, also similar, we have the ‘psychic’. Now, ‘psychic’ doesn't study psychology. 

The psychic is more of a fortune-teller. If you're curious, or you want to get  

an idea about the future, you might visit a psychic. 

And maybe they check your  hand or they look at cards, 

but a psychic tries to tell you about your future, and that's what they do. 

So, yeah, ‘psychic’ is more of  what we say a ‘fortune-teller’. 

That's a similar term right there. And then down here at the bottom, 

you've probably heard this before is ‘psycho’. Alright this is someone whose mind is a little  

broken. Okay. 

Maybe they do bad things because of it. Many many scary movies have a psycho character  

in them who's causing problems for other people. So, yeah, we have that the psycho person. 

It's kind of, maybe even a  little crazy here, but okay. 

So as you notice, PS very  common, but don't say the P. 

Alright. So just one more time,  

I'm going to pronounce these for you. So listen up. 

We start with pneumonia, psalm, psychology,  psychiatrist, psychic, and psycho. 

So alright. If you ever see these words,  

in something you're reading, just remember, there's a silent P, when the word begins with P,  

and is followed by a consonant. I hope that helps. 

And I hope you remember it. Have a good day.