hi everyone and welcome back to love English so today we're looking at the
rules of silent letters a Shh now this is a bit of a complicated topic
but I'm not going to be alone in explaining this topic I have someone to
help me so we have a special guest on our channel today Emma from
pronunciation with Emma so Emma do you want to tell us a little bit about your
channel and introduce yourself hi favourite and hello to everyone who's
watching my name is Emma and I'm from the channel pronunciation with Emma I
know it's a very creative name isn't it but that's because I help English
learners improve their British accent and pronunciation or simply I just help
them get accustomed to listening to British accents and pronunciation as
well now guys what we are going to do is we're going to look at 15 words that you
commonly mispronounced and these are words that we hear mispronounced all the
time and we're going to look at the reason why you're mispronouncing those
words which is because they have silent letters in them
EmmaI have a question for you if you saw this word for the first time how
would you say it so Sabrah when you sent me this word I did laugh because when I
was younger I'm talking about when I was a child I did pronounce this word as
yakt for many many many years I remember reading it in a book and I
thought it was a yact I said yakt for many years and it
wasn't until someone said the correct way which is yacht when I said oh hold
on I've been pronouncing it wrong now I pronounce it the correct way thank
goodness yeah for many years as a child I said
yakt yeah I think I would say something
similar too so English is not phonetic it's absolutely not phonetic and this is
why we have to learn the rules for how to pronounce words as much as we can as
they are very useful guys don't forget to subscribe to us and also Emma's
channel as well the link is down in the description box and also I made a video
with Emma all about connected speech the rules of connected speech so be sure to
go and check that out after this video so number one is island now here
whenever we have an S that comes after an i we don't pronounce the S so we
don't say Iceland I hear this a lot we say Island
another example is Isle and also Isle they're pronounced exactly the same way
so don't pronounce the S here so the next word is sword sword many people may
pronounce this sword now actually the rule is that with the
letter W W is not pronounced if it comes before R so this is the case in words
like right wrestle wrist W is also often not pronounced when it's with an H for
example who whose hole whomever however this is not always the
case as you have words like what and where where w is pronounced other cases
of assignment w include answer and to answer the next one here is not connive
I hear Knife a lot a k knife and fork it is not it's actually knife whenever
you have a K and n at the beginning of a word that K is silent so I don't say
tonight I say nice some of the examples are no knock and knowledge so that K is
silent because we have an N coming after them and there at the start of a word
I'm going to give you two examples for number four because I've heard both
equally mispronounced one is climb and the other is lamb and here we have a
silent B you don't need to say climb or Lamb nothing like that
it is climb lamb so the rule for the letter B is that B is often not
pronounced when it comes after the letter M so for example bomb comb tomb
thumb crumb another world with a letter B is it's not usually pronounced when it
comes before the letter T so words like doubt debt subtle you cannot hear the
b in those words the next one is muscle so whenever we have this
combination of s and C that C is silent muscle so not muscle or anything like
that remove that C remove the c muscle muscle some examples of this are
scissors fascinate and science don't pronounce that C science not
science I hear that a lot remove that c it's just science, science
number six is castle castle and this is the rule with the letter T the T is silent
in Castle you just completely ignore the T the letter T is not pronounced in the
following English words Christmas listen fasten bustle also some words that we
get from French like beret and ballet here the T is not pronounced you can also
pronounce often without the T as well but some people do choose to pronounce
the T however the more common pronunciation today is often the next
one is Wednesday notice that I don't say wet nest day Wednesday here the D is
silent it's only two syllables okay Wednesday Wednesday
now that D is normally silent when we have either an n afterwards or a G after
it for example Wednesday pledge and grudge
the D is also not pronounced in the words handsome and sandwich what tends to
happen here is whenever you have a D sound that comes after an n we tend to
not pronounce the D it's a bit tricky to pronounce it so we just remove it
handsome and sandwich number eight again I'm giving you two because these are
both equally mispronounced time and ice cream time and ice cream now be honest
have you ever said that final E so said time e Portuguese speakers Spanish
speakers I'm talking to you now the e is silent at the end of these words in fact
E is generally silent when it comes at the end of words
for example table before hide write we don't say that final e also ear is not
usually said in ed endings so in regular verbs which take the ed ending
for example walked talked listened they either take D T or id, id may be has a
slight EE sound in it but still it is not really pronounced in their normal
way that we would say II so you can basically ignore the e in E D endings as
well the next one is honest and this one probably is the most difficult one to
explain so thank you Sabra the letter h is usually silent when it comes after a
w for example why what when and where so we don't pronounce that H don't try to
say what or anything like that it's that's like really difficult so don't
pronounce that H however sometimes it is the other way around
and we actually pronounce the H but we don't pronounce the W for example hole
who whoever and whose I don't pronounce that W they all start
with a h sound this time I pronounce the huh
now sometimes the H is completely silent at the beginning of words for example
heir, honest and honour make sure that when you use these words you use the article
and so you say in there an honest for example don't use uh even though there
is an H spelling there we're going by the sound and the sound we use is
actually a vowel at the beginning of those words so make sure you're using an
an honest person for example not a honest person however in general most of
the words that start with H are not silent
for example history historical and happy number 10
is psychology psychology and I remember mispronouncing this myself when I was a
child so this is the rule for the letter P and normally if it's with a PS it is
silent so we would say the s not the P psychology however sometimes pH is
pronounced as an F such as paragraph elephant telephone so we forget that pH
and we say it as but other examples with the letter P are if it goes with an N
such as pneumonia there we just say the n sound and we forget the P the next
ones are though and through now the spelling G H is often not pronounced
when it comes after a vowel for example in the words high light thought and
through notice that I don't pronounce any G H sounds no get all H sounds
here some exceptions to this rule are cough laugh or laugh of you from the
South of England and tough all of these have a f sound at the end number 12 is
the word foreigner foreigner now you may have said in the past
foreigner or foreigner something like this but actually the G is silent and it is
foreigner so the letter G is usually not pronounced when it comes before n for
example align sign however this is English so there are some exceptions and
these are magnet cognitive signature the next one is salmon now typically we
don't pronounce the L before the vowels a oh and you however there are some
varieties where they do pronounce the L in salmon but what I'm showing you today
is what considered RP the is the standard way of pronouncing it is
the way that you will find it in the dictionary
some examples are calf, calm, half would should could and yolk so the next word
is ache ache you have a stomach ache not a stomachache or a stomachachee it
is ache now this is a silent h and CH can actually be said as a K sound
for example archaeology architecture chaos character so silent h and that CH
sound can be said as a k the next one is champagne so here we don't pronounce the
G whenever we have a G and end together in a word we don't pronounce the G so we
say champagne that's it for me thank you very much harmony on your channel Sabrah
I will see you very soon bye bye guys and that concludes our lesson on the
rules of silent letters so no more excuses now guys don't forget to go and
check out the video I did with Emma on her channel which is all about connected
speech and a big thank you to Emma for joining us and helping me explain this
slightly complicated area of silent letters we'll see you soon on love
English guys bye bye now sometimes the h is completely silent at the beginning of
the Guddu oh my goodness