why in some words the letters are silent ?????
Answers
Answer:
Silent letters are the ghosts of pronunciations past. The word 'knight', with its silent 'k', and silent 'gh', is cognate with the German word for servant, 'knecht', where every letter is pronounced.
Explanation:
Silent 'e' (eg, tot vs tote) is a bit more of a complicated story. In Chaucer's day, the 'e' was pronounced. So, in a word like 'bite' (not a real old-English example, but simpler for exposition) the 'e' at the end would have meant that the word was pronounced bi.te, with two syllables. In the Germanic language, open syllables had long vowels, so 'bit' would be short 'i', 'bite' would be long. Nowadays, the distinction between long and short vowels in English is actually more than just length because of the Great Vowel Shift.
So, whereas before, 'bite' would have been something like 'beetuh', the Great Vowel Shift and the eventual elision of the final 'e' makes its modern pronunciation 'byt' – silent 'e'
Answer:
often silent letters in english are diacritic lettersyou can compare the words fin and fine the e isnt pronounced but it changes the pronounciation of the vowel by lengthening it
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