Silent Letters - Junior Inter - Textbook Exercises

Some patterns of Silent Vowels

1. A can be silent especially with words ending “ically”.

E.g: basically, musically, logically

2. E is silent at the end of a word and makes the internal vowel a long vowel.

E.g: Bible, cycle

hid-hide, sit-site

But if ‘ e ‘ is the last letter and only vowel sound then it is not silent.

E.g: He, She, We

It is also silent mostly with words ending with ‘ed’ (past regular verb forms)

E.g: looked, asked, played

3. I is silent in words like 

E.g: Parliament, business, friend

4. O is silent in words like 

E.g: young, trouble, cousin

5. U is silent after ‘ g ‘ and before a vowel.

E.g: guitar, colleague, tongue

Also silent in some adverbs ending with ‘ully’.

E.g: successfully, carefully, wonderfully

Some patterns of Silent consonants

1. B is silent before ‘t’ and after ‘m’.

E.g: debt, subtle, doubt, comb, plumber, crumb, womb, tomb

2. C is often silent after ‘ s ‘ and before ‘ i ‘ or ‘ e ‘.

It is also silent in the combination ck

E.g: Science, scissors, scepter, fascinate

Rock, hack, check, click

3. D is normally silent before the letter ‘ g ‘ and after ‘ n ‘.

E.g: Edge, knowledge, fridge handsome, sandwich

4. G is not pronounced if it comes before ‘ n ‘

E.g: sign, foreign, champagne (but there are exceptions to words like magnet, ignore, signature)

5. Gh is silent at the end of the word and when preceded by an ‘ i ‘, ‘au’, ‘ou’

E.g: high, fight, sight, brought, fright, sigh, taught, straight, caught, thought

6. H is silent when it follows ‘w’

E.g: what, who, whistle, why, white, where

Sometimes it is not pronounced in the beginnig of a word.

E.g: hour, honest, honour

It is silent when it follows ‘c, g,r’.

E.g: ch-choir, echo; gh- ghost, ghetto; rh-rhythm, rhino

7. K is silent in combination of ‘kn’ in the beginning of a word.

E.g: knowledge, knife, knight

8. N is silent in the digraph ‘mn’

E.g: autumn, column, hymn

9. P is silent in the combination of ‘Ps’, ‘Pt’, ‘Pn’ at the beginning of a word

E.g: psychology, psyche, psalm, pterodactyl, pneumonia and also in words like receipt, raspberry.

10. R is silent if it is at the end of a word or followed by a consonant.

E.g: butter, poor, fork (but Americans pronounce the last ‘r’).

11. S is silent when it comes after ‘ i ‘.

E.g.: island, aisle, debris

12. T is not pronounced before ‘ch’

E.g: match, witch, sketch

If a word ends with ‘sten’, the letter ‘t’ is silent

E.g: listen, fasten, moisten, soften

If a word ends with ‘stle’,’t’ is not pronounced.

E.g: castle, hustle, pestle, rustle

In French words ending with ‘et’, the last ‘t’ is silent.

E.g: ballet, buffet, gourmet, bouquet, debut

13. W is silent in words beginning with ‘wr’ and ‘wh’

E.g: write, wrong, wring, wreck, wrist, whole, whom, who

Some common words with silent ‘w’

E.g: sword, answer, two

14. Z There aren’t many words in English with silent ‘z’.

E.g: laissez-faire, rendezvous

One can learn silent letters only by listening to the words often and learn the correct pronunciation by phonetic transcription.

Exercise:

Identify the silent consonants in the following words.

No.	Word	Silent Letter
1	Thumb	b
2	Thirst	None
3	Muscle	c
4	Iron	r
5	Write	w
6	Vehicle	h
7	Numb	b
8	Yolk	l
9	Clutch	None
10	Campaign	g
11	Aisle	s
12	Neighbour	gh
13	Scent	c
14	Almond	l
15	World	l
16	Tackle	None
17	Wrinkle	w
18	Knot	k
19	Bright	gh
20	Journey	None
21	Chalk	l
22	Limb	b
23	Weight	gh
24	Wrath	w
25	Folk	l
26	Discipline	c
27	Mortgage	t
28	Fascinate	c
29	Design	g
30	Balm	l
31	Thigh	gh
32	Rustlings	t
33	Knob	k
34	Slaughter	gh
35	Yacht	ch
36	Heir	h
37	Answer	w
38	Cupboard	p
39	Palm	l
40	Thorn	None
41	Christmas	t
42	Pledge	None
43	Wrong	w
44	Sword	w
45	Knew	k
46	Rapport	t
47	Scene	c
48	Debris	s
49	Depot	t
50	Alms	l
51	Hour	h
52	Salmon	l
53	Knee	k
54	Castle	t
55	Wednesday	d
56	Wreath	w
57	Judge	None
58	Knock	k
59	Honourable	h
60	Thumb	b