The silent letters that were never pronounced
Some silent letters are the record of a sound English used to have. Others were never spoken at all — they were added later, on purpose, to make the word look learned.
By Dilnoza Yusufova · Linguist
There is a difference between a silent letter that used to be spoken and one that never was, and English contains plenty of both. The k of knight is a fossil: somebody said it, and the spelling remembers. The b of debt is a costume: nobody has ever said it, in English or in French, and it was put there deliberately, several centuries after the word arrived, to make it resemble a Latin ancestor.
In short
- In knight, write and walk the silent letters record sounds English really had.
- In debt, doubt, receipt and island they never stood for anything — scribes put them in.
- Knowing which is which does not change the pronunciation, but it does explain why the list has no rule.
The fossils
These are the ordinary ones. A sound existed, the spelling recorded it, the sound went, the spelling stayed.
| Spelling | Words | What was there |
|---|---|---|
| kn- | knight, know, knee, knife | /k/, pronounced until about 1600 |
| gn- | gnaw, gnat, gnome | /ɡ/, lost in the same period |
| wr- | write, wrong, wrist | a /w/ before the /r/ |
| -gh | night, light, though | /x/, the sound in Scots loch |
| -mb | lamb, comb, climb | /b/, lost after the /m/ |
| -lk, -lf | walk, talk, half, calf | an /l/ that melted into the vowel |
- knight, know, kneethe /k/ survived into Shakespeare’s lifetime
- write, wrong, wrista /w/ before the /r/, gone by about 1700
- lamb, comb, climbthe /b/ fell silent after /m/
- walk, half, calfthe /l/ melted into the vowel beside it
The -gh group is the largest and the messiest of them, and it has a page of its own: the same lost consonant left seven different pronunciations behind it.
The decorations
Now the other kind. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, English scholars and printers took words that had come in quietly from French and rewrote them to display a Latin pedigree.
| Word | The letter | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| debt | b | From French dette. The b was added to show Latin debitum. |
| doubt | b | French doute, dressed up after Latin dubitare. |
| receipt | p | French receite, after Latin recepta. Its relative deceit escaped. |
| salmon | l | French saumon, after Latin salmo. |
| island | s | Native English īegland. The s came from isle, a word it is not related to. |
| scissors | c | French cisoires, after Latin scissor, ‘cutter’ — which is the wrong Latin word. |
Island is the best of them, because the scholarship was wrong. The word is native English — Old English īegland, meaning water-land, with no Latin anywhere in its past. But it sounded like isle, which does come from Latin insula by way of French, and so island was given a borrowed s out of a family it does not belong to. The letter has been sitting there, silent and unearned, for four hundred years.
When a letter talks its way back
The strangest part of the story is recent. For most of the history of English, spelling followed speech at a distance. Now that almost everyone reads, the direction can reverse: a letter that sat silent for centuries starts being pronounced because people can see it.
- oftensilent /t/ for centuries, widely pronounced again today
- almondthe /l/ is coming back the same way
- forehead/ˈfɒrɪd/ is giving way to /ˈfɔːhed/
Mistakes to avoid
Wrong: debt — /debt/ correct: debt — /det/
The b has never been pronounced in English. It was added to the spelling in the sixteenth century.
Wrong: island — /ˈaɪslənd/ correct: island — /ˈaɪlənd/
The s is not part of the word’s history at all. Isle has one because it comes from Latin insula; island does not.
Wrong: receipt — /rɪˈsiːpt/ correct: receipt — /rɪˈsiːt/
Silent p, like the b of debt. The verb receive never acquired one.
Wrong: salmon — /ˈsælmən/ correct: salmon — /ˈsæmən/
The l is a spelling decoration. Compare almond, where many speakers now do pronounce it — a letter can talk its way back into the word.
Check yourself
Trust your ear
4 pairs
Four questions about which letters were ever really spoken.
Which of these letters was once really pronounced?
**Knight** was /knixt/ into the sixteenth century. The **b** of **debt** never stood for a sound in English.
Which word has a letter that was added on purpose?
**Comb** kept a **b** that was spoken; **doubt** was given one to look like Latin *dubitare*.
How is island pronounced?
Two syllables, no /s/. The letter arrived by association with **isle**, which is a different word.
Which pair shows the same lost sound as night?
All three once ended in /x/. **Lamb** and **climb** lost a /b/, which is a different loss.
Keep this
- Silent letters come in two kinds: sounds that died, and letters that were never sounds.
- kn-, gn-, wr-, -gh, -mb, -lk are fossils. debt, doubt, receipt, island, salmon, scissors are decorations.
- Neither kind is pronounced today, so for speaking the distinction is history — but it explains why no rule covers the list.
Questions readers ask
Why would anyone add a letter nobody says?
Because in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Latin was the language of learning, and showing a word’s Latin ancestry made it look respectable. Some of those scholars also got the ancestry wrong, which is how island and scissors ended up with letters that belong to other words.
Do silent letters ever come back?
Sometimes. Often was /ˈɒfən/ for centuries; the t is now widely pronounced again, under the influence of the spelling. The same is happening to the l of almond. Spelling is no longer only a record of speech; it has started to change it.
Is there any rule for learners?
Only the groups. Learn kn-, gn-, wr-, -mb and -lk as patterns, since each covers several words, and learn debt, doubt, receipt, island, salmon and scissors one by one, since each is its own accident.
Sources
- Crystal, D. Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling. London: Profile Books, 2012.
- Upward, C., and Davidson, G. The History of English Spelling. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
- Oxford English Dictionary, entries for debt, doubt, island, receipt, salmon, scissors.