Why do we have silent letters?

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English can be a pretty tricky language sometimes. You might look at the word whistle and think, “What happened to that T and that H?” We don’t pronounce them. They are silent letters.

Nearly every letter in the alphabet can be silent. There are hundreds of rules to help figure out how to spell and read words, but they do not work all the time. Often it can be very confusing. Most times, we just have to memorize the tricky spellings.

Silent letters show up because English has a lot of influences. About a third of the world uses English. It takes words and spellings from many different languages. A lot of times, when there is a silent H at the begging of a word, it comes from a rule in French language pronunciation. That’s why hour sounds like our.

Silent Ks come from Old English, which was spoken in England before 1100 CE. They actually used to be pronounced, but over hundreds of years, the sound was dropped, leaving us with the words knife and knight, where we don’t pronounce the first letters.

Sometimes silent letters are used to give us a clue how to pronounce things. If there is an E at the end of a word, it is often silent, but it usually lets us know a vowel that comes before it will have a “long” sound. This is why haze sounds like hays and not has.

If you’re confused by all these silent letters, don’t worry. Many grown-ups find them confusing too! The more you read and practice spelling, the better you’ll be able to figure out how these silent letters work! 

The Silent ABCs

Try going through each letter of the alphabet and see if you can think of a word where that letter is silent. You may need to use names of people and places to help if you get stuck. Are some letters never silent?

Here are some words to get you started.

heAd

comB

aDjust

sCene