Welcome back to my channel Learn Academic English as you may know the purpose of my channel is
to help intermediate and advanced level English learners improve their English for school and work
and one of the things that I know is so important for English learners in school and work situations
is pronunciation they want to feel confident in their pronunciation and unfortunately
English pronunciation is so difficult and tricky especially because the spelling of words often
doesn't match the pronunciation so in today's video I'm going to give you a quick lesson on
silent letters these are not all the silent letters in English but these are some of the most
common ones so first let's take a look at silent h and there aren't very many words with silent h but
three common ones are our honest and honor if you want to know more about the h sound and silent h
check out this video about h that I already have on my channel in the next group we have silent l
for example walk talk now in these words the l is completely silent and the only thing that we hear
in the middle of the word is the vowel sound ah walk some English learners will want to pronounce
the l like talk or talk but it's completely silent it should just be the vowel ah walk talk
and then we have a few more like folks half totally silent l half a similar word is
calf which is the lower part of your leg or a baby cow is a calf
should would could all of those words we just have the vowel uh but there's no l should would could
okay in the next group we have silent t and this group is a little larger and there are some other
words too but these are some of the most common for example mortgage mortgage is a word that we
use a lot in the U.S. it's the loan that you take out when you buy a house mortgage mortgage payment
next one is sofin listen totally silent t sophen listen
in the next word often this one is tricky because some English speakers will say often
that's fine there are different pronunciations but most people will say often and that's probably the
pronunciation that you want to use too because it follows the same pattern as soften listen often
christmas christmas totally silent tea castle whistle again silent tea castle whistle
in the next group we have silent b and there are many of these I'm sure you're familiar with
them already bomb bomb no b at the end bomb two this is a place where a person might be buried
to so this is tricky because they have the same spelling but the vowels are different bomb tune
num num is when you don't have any feeling like if you if your feet fall asleep they might get numb
or if you have surgery your skin might be numb or if you put ice on your skin it might be numb
thumb thumb no b some doubt doubt again silent b climb plumber a plumber is a person who um fixes
the plumbing in your house which would be the water pipes sinks faucets and a lamb lamb
so again silent b's okay in the next group we have some French words now we have a lot of
French words in English and in English we don't pronounce them exactly correctly in
the French way and we're not supposed to these are words that we've borrowed from French into
English but in most of these we keep the silent letters that French would also have
for example in the word corps so silent p silent s corps what does corps mean a corps is a group
that have a special mission like the army corps or marine corps
or we also talk about the Peace Corps the Peace Corps is an organization that president John F.
Kennedy started and my uncle was actually in the Peace Corps in Iran and so the Peace Corps is a
group of people who go to different countries and they teach or they build hospitals or they help
people with health care but again corps the p and the s are silent in the next ones we have tea
at the end of words like buffet buffet is when all the food is out for you and you can help yourself
or ballet the dance and rapport rapport is a connection that people have that they feel
friendly together rapport to have a good rapport with someone so again these are all French words
and we keep the silent letters that exist in French and the last one is faux pas
so silent x silent s faux pas a faux pas is when you do something wrong that is like embarrassing
in a public situation okay and then finally in the last group we have two words with silent w
answer sword answer sword so forget about the w in both of those words we don't pronounce it at all
I hope this little lesson about pronunciation helps you to feel more confident when you are
speaking English if you have any questions please let me know and check out my other
pronunciation videos which I will link down below until next time take care