An old BritCom (The Young Ones, IIRC) had a line something like "His name is Rick, with a silent P".

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

One of my father's: "the P is silent, as in bath".

Regards,

John Davies

Or, as Benny Hill once put it, "as in swimming pool!" ;-)

Cheers,

JohnGG

Pool-side sign: "Welcome to our ool! [Notice there's no "P" in it...]"

Ugh...

Ha, The Young Ones, what a larf! And surreal.

Wot's a wok?
It's like a frying pan.
No, it's wot you twow at wabbits.

Does v in "revving" really count? In my books it's the same as the double l in "falling" - the two letters in the double are not pronounced separately from each other, but they act to disambiguate the pronunciation of the preceding vowel.

I'd expect "reving" to rhyme with "leaving".

Bringing things back to Perl, the parentheses are "silent" (useless) here:

But act as a disambiguator here:

The idea was to give all (English) letters an option. The double letter options were given when i didn't find anything better.

BTW, that's not an excuse. Just an explanation. :)

fivepence works in some dialects

Nice! I'd have left off the 'v' entry.

I'm more impressed by the invisible English letters like the 'f' in "rough".

There's an invisible 'f' in "laughter" but the invisible 'f' is silent in "daughter".

- tye        

For me there is also an invisible "f" in "lieutenant" as the standard British pronunciation is like "leftenant"

mneumonic

??

mneumonic is a fine example for a silent m, and an even better example for a silent u: the u is so silent that it is typically not even written ;-)

SCNR

Yep, oops... if only pneu, i mean new doh! i mean gnu (will continue when i finish with the recursion)

FWIW, i fixed it in the original Re: poll ideas quest 2011. :P

adj.   Having the character of water in the lungs due to mono.

- tye        

I'm pretty sure that's still pneumonic

He actually mean mnemonic, for sure.

These words like 'pneumonia' and 'mnemonic' came from greek. And not only in english they came - that's the key point. When these greek words with diphthong 'eu' have adopted in russian language it receives a strong 'v' sound in place of greek 'u'. So, the 'pneumonia' sounds like 'pnevmonia' in russian, but 'mnemonic' is still 'mnemonika'.

I've done some research on google and yes, it's μνημονικά and πνευμονία.

mneumonic is a common error (instead of the proper "mnemonic") among even supposedly literate adults.

I was also su-prised by the idea that surprise's first r is silent. I've always pronounced both r's for as long as I can remember (which nowadays is about 10 minutes).

I wonder if it's a regional thing? My mother was from the (US) midwest. Most of the folks out there talk about the nation's capital as "Warshington DC". In which case, there's the on-again, off-again r for you...again.

forecastle foyer

It's the second r that's silent ;-)

How is hajj an English word? Same way that rendezvous and skiff and alcohol are.

I think most people would make a distinction between words that have been adopted into mainstream English usage, and foreign language words that we use because there isn't an English word. Hajj isn't a generic word that can be used for any other purpose. It has a specific meaning, and it is inappropriate - even offensive - to use it in any other context. I would never "go on a hajj to Bletchley Park", for instance, but I would "go on a pilgrimage" to it. So while technically it is "a word that is used in the English language", it's very much a borderline case. Although it's legal in Scrabble, so maybe I'm wrong.

An apropos putdown

Said to be said by either Margot Grahame or Margot Asquith to Jean Harlow.

I'm not sure about "f as in halfpenny".

That's a silent "lf" in English-English pronunciation.

halfpenny did not work for me as well. Shall we go with giraffe ?


Wait! This isn't a Parachute, this is a Backpack!

Actually "halfpenny" works for me because the "l" is missing in the pronunciation of "half" anyway, so in English-English "halfpenny" only loses the "f" as there there was no "l" to lose. I would say something like "haaf" for "half" normally but "halfpenny" is like "haypenny".

"giraffe" has an "f" at the end when I say it. Can you say it without one? Wouldn't that just be "gira"?

I thought that vowels aren't missing in New Zealand English: they're just all "u"

g as in phlegm. yugm.

I've changed my mind. I'd like to vote for the silent r in oh-so-many words in the standard English-English pronunciation. I can't call it British English because Scottish people often pronounce the r where the English don't. My dear departed Scottish father even said the r in "iron".

So my vote should have gone to the silent r that is a major feature of English-English pronunciation, the technical adjective being "non-rhotic".

Mertserger

PS I am fairly sure all the words in the poll would appear in any reasonable English dictionary so although they may have been borrowed from other languages they're English now. Someone once said: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

I don't think the r's are silent, they just take 'em away and use 'em somewhere else. Like after a's. I always crack up when listening to BBC Mid-East reports mentioning the "Garzer Strip"

The bęte noire in this household over the years has always been the invisible, but sometimes rolled, R that results in "law and order" sounding like "laurrrrra ndoda". And since "ndoda" means "man" in several of the Nguni languages, it could be a valid name.

Regards,

John Davies

The "o" completely disappears in the phrase "play possum" :-)

But there is no silent O in "possum" though it is possible there might be a missing one, if you consider possum=opossum. It is quite common for words to lose letters over time, like how the Latin "fenestra" became the French "fenętre". Can you tell I do tech support for a dictionary?

checking WP reveals that opossums and possums belong to different families.

So probably it's a false example.

Cheers Rolf

P in psychology, and c in scent.

P as in Psmith.

If I was allowed to vote for my least favourite silent letter, it would be the "b" in "debt". The original spelling in English was "dete" or "dett" but at some point an idiot decided that because it derives from the Latin "debere" (to owe) it should be given a silent "b" to show its origins.

As if English spelling and pronuciation are inconsistent enough without that!

I meant to type "As if English spelling and pronuciation are not inconsistent enough without that! - oops

There's a difference between "silent" and "pronounced differently" in the language it was borrowed/stolen from. "ll" => "y" and "j" => "h" (someone said something about a "silent" 'h' in some other spanish word elsewhere in this thread).

Hermano runrig,
fo11ow not the tro11s, down ca11ous and su11en va11ies
my ste11ar she11 of a po11 response, was to sta11 a11 Name Space quandaries

-silent11

My favourite silent(ish) letter is the h in John. At the very least it seems it should be spelled Jhon.

Careful what you wish for! (from Ecuador)

Incidentally, it's mnemonic, not mneumonic.

The "z" is technically not silent in "rendezvous". "ez" as a whole forms the "é" sound, and neither letter on its own would sound that way. It's like English's "sh", but it's a vowel instead of a consonant. French has many such combinations.

The "o" in "opossum" is not silent. "Possum" refers to a completely different animal.

Which "r" of "surprise" do think is silent?!

The "o" in "opossum" is not silent. "Possum" refers to a completely different animal.

According to Merriam-Webster, the "o" in opossum is optionally silent.

I'm not sure what to make of the pronunciation of opossum at dict.org, as I can't find a pronunciation guide there (maybe the "*" after the "O" means it's optional? - update: Nope, other examples show clearly it's just a delimiter between syllables).

I find it interesting that only the opossum "plays possum." I think perhaps the "o" is an invisible silent letter in that phrase :-)

"Which "r" of "surprise" do think is silent?!"

ikegami,

I think to many Americans the first syllable of "serpent" has a noticiable "r" at the end whereas "surprise" doesn't, so that is what they mean by the missing r. To me they both have more-or-less the same first syllable, so I suspect I would sound like I am not saying the "r" in "serpent" to them as well.

As I said in another post on this thread the technical term is "rhotic" for the pronunciation which says the "r" in "serpent", "non-rhotic" where you don't. Wikipedia has an interesting article on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents. Are you a non-rhotic speaker too?

My favorite silent letter to intentionally pronounce is the "p" in Pflugerville. With maximum plosiveness at that.

Hehe, I do that too. Howdy fellow Central Texan!

though they aren't letters, I love the silent and non-silent spaces in combinations of

"China and Japan"

and the like. That sounds like "Chinarand Japan". The first blank is an audible -r-, but the other isn't.

Cheers, Sören

They actually have a name, "intrusive r". Something pretty hard to get right for non-native speakers BTW.

You can blame Bill The Bastard (sorry, I meant William the Conqueror) for that. He brought a whole bunch of French words into English. The aristocracy spoke French, the normal commoners spoke Anglo-Saxon. That's why you get two names for most types of meat; mutton and lamb (which comes from l'angneau), ox and beef (from bœuf), etc.

Look closely and you'll find that English (even the version with Merriam and Webster's messed up spelling (color vs colour)) is an amalgamation of Latin, Greek, Arabic, French, German, Anglo, Saxon, Swedish, Norwegian and Chinese plus a whole bunch of other words borrowed from around the old British Empire.

lamb (which comes from l'angneau),

the choice of the word lamb curiously breaks that schema (which stays valid nearly everywhere else). It is believed to be a much older word from germanic/protogermanic roots, qf the German "Lamm", Dutch & Scandinavian languages "lam", Nedersaksisch "Laom" etc.

Just the other way round mutton is from French mouton, so you have been unhappily mixing the pair the wrong way up.

Cheers, Sören

Later addition: "Billy the Bastard" would indeed have been an appropriate and probably undisputed name for the young William, I learned.

in italian we are lucky.. we only have H as in hotel the rest is a cla
+sh!
[download]

t as in Atlantic

    um, ...errr... -- for this speaker of "standard american" (which is not standard for all Americans) -- would you tell us which "t" in Atlantic is silent. Or is it the 't' in Atlantic's surname, "Ocean?"

BTW, you have your text in your sig div.

My american collegue (born in Philadelphia) says Alantic City.
He says that is correct. However today I have asked him this question, and he has responded:

In the New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia area the 't' tends to be pronounced as a 'd' when it is the first letter and silent when it is in the word. This is like the Italian accents from the different regions.


(($_="Mzz ojjdloobnf jt uvy5502383")=~y~b-zg2-5c96-81~a-z0-9~s)=~s~~~s; print

Webster's Dictionary has it as Aluminum since the 1828 edition. Sorry, I didn't get taught from a text earlier than that. Oh, and, um... "I like pie!"
Well, that's my $.02 worth. No, for refunds you'll have to check our customer service department.

b as in amber??

As in

I suppose you yanks say 'bizness' rather that 'biziness' and say 'suhprise' instead of 'sirprise', but don't blame your aberrant behaviour on the language.

Never went beyond the Zebra?

My favorite oddity of the English(American) language is this alternate spelling of fish:ghoti: gh = f as in tough o = short i as in women ti = ti as in nation :)