Scienze dell’Educazione e della Formazione a.a. 2010-11

Silent Letters

letters and syllables you don’t hear or say but are written!

Some unstressed sylllables disappear altogether in spoken English – this is always a source of trouble for non-native speakers.

Examples of ‘long’ words that become ‘short’ when spoken

Comfortable Different Interesting Interested Laboratory raspberry

Corporate Literature Procedure Temperature dictionary Marvellous

Silent ‘k’

‘k’ before ‘n’ at the beginning of a word is silent

know knee knock knight knickers knife knit knuckle knot

Silent ‘p’

A ‘p’ before an ‘s’ at the beginning of a word is silent

psychology psycholinguistics psyche psychoanalysis psychiatrist psychopath psychodrama psychedelic

Silent ‘h’ The following words have a silent ‘h’

(they function as a vowel – eg. an hour

honest honour, honesty, honourable hour heir

Silent ‘r’

final ‘er’ is pronounced [Ə]

e.g. teacher father mother further driver computer master

The ‘r’ in ‘ar’ [a:] lengthens the vowel eg. bar car far star start cart art

Other Silent letters

1. final ‘n’ after ‘m’ eg. column autumn2. ‘e’ in ‘ed’ eg. walked phoned stopped3. ‘gh’ before ‘t’ eg. daughter night eight4. an ‘l’ or an ‘r’ that precede a consonant

after a pure vowel e.g. calm form warm5. the ‘t’ in cluster ‘stle’ eg. castle, whistle

bustle

Silent ‘e’ A final ‘e’ which follows cluster

‘single vowel + single consonant is silent. BUT it makes the single vowel say its name.

1. can vs cane man vs mane2. bit vs bite kit vs kite 3. tub vs. tube cub vs cube4. mop vs mope cop vs cope

Glottal stop The glottal stop, or more fully, the

voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʔ. It is called the glottal stop because the technical term for the gap between the vocal folds, which is closed up in the production of this sound, is the glottis.

Italian version L'occlusiva glottidale sorda è una

consonante, rappresentata con il simbolo [ʔ] nell'alfabeto fonetico internazionale (IPA). Essa viene anche chiamata comunemente colpo di glottide (in inglese glottal stop, in francese coup de glotte). Un colpo di glottide è realizzato quando le corde vocali si chiudono bruscamente per fermare il flusso dell'aria e immediatamente dopo vengono riaperte.

Examples of words pronounced with a glottal stop Commonly the ‘dd’ and ‘tt’ in the clusters -ddle and -ttle are pronounced with a glottal

stop middle kettle settle little fiddle paddle saddle