Hello and welcome to LetThemTalk and what I want to talk to you about today is The magic “e".
Every British kid knows about the magic “e". I learnt it at school in London when
I was about 6 or 7 years old. I think Americans call it the "silent e" but it's
the same. Do a search in youtube and you'll find songs for kids about the silent "e"
or the magic “e”.
So what is it? It's a rule of spelling that will help your pronunciation too.
An if you want to bring your spelling and pronunciation to a good level then you need
to learn it. English spelling is quite archaic with
lots of irregular spellings and pronunciation but here is one rule that you can learn and
which really useful. If you want to know more then stay tuned.
So the vowels in English are A,E,I,O,U. but there are 2 ways to pronounce these. You
have the long vowel pronunciation (which is also the name of the vowels) and the short
vowel pronunciation. The sounds can vary a bit and I have a litlle London accent but basically
the short vowels are ...
[examples]
So let's see what happens when we put an "e" at the end of these
words. So the “e” stays silent but the previous vowel sound says the name of its
letter. So the name of the letters are A,E,I,O.U so....
Of course there are many exceptions
such, as "have". "come", love", "none", "done". ..By the way, hundreds of years
ago these were pronounced with a magic "e"
We've changed the pronunciation but not the spelling. which is
completely ridiculous and I wish I could change the English language but..
Some foreign words don't have the magic "e" such as "promenade" or "karaoke".
sometimes foreign words
keep foreign accents in order NOT to have the magic "e" at the end - to make the "e" pronounced.
Such as
résumé (with French accents). and not resume. Spelt the same but without accents (an English word).
and café has an accent we don't want to say "cafe" (kaif).
So when people say there are no accent marks
in English well, that's not quite true and for good reason.
This rule also helps explain a lot of English spelling too
The magic "e" generally only works before a single consonant. So where we require a
short vowel we can double the consonant before the "e" and it will keep it short.;
That's why "write" has a single "T"
so the magic “e" will give the "i" sound - write.
"wrote" too has a magic "e"but written (with a short vowel) has a double "t"
other examples .....
OK well it's not everyday that you learn some magic but today you've learnt
the magic “e”. Thank you for watching and more English language videos coming soon.