Glimpses pronunciation6/18/2023 ![]() Many consonants can be silent: b, c, ch, d, g, h, k,l, m, n, p, t, or w. Even if it doesn’t work anymore, it’s still pretty nice to have! Just think of it as an ancient ancestor’s lovely timepiece passed to you by inheritance. The k’s weren’t silent in Old English, but by the time Modern English developed, they had learned how to hush. Many of the kn- combinations came into English from Germanic languages. As you can see, g and k are usually silent when they begin a word and are followed by an n. There’s the silent g of gnarly, gnome, and gnu. There’s the silent k of know, knight, and knot. Silent letters are another bone of contention with English language learners. Don’t you feel better about that one already? Another influential change to the pronunciation occurred when translator William Tyndale spelled it won in his translation of the Bible. In the Middle Ages the stressed vowel evolved into a diphthong, as stressed vowels often do. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, one was once pronounced similarly to the on- in only. Why not start at the beginning with the number one? One rhymes with gun, but not with lone, which seems to be related in meaning. If you understand them better, you may discover that they’re not always as illogical as they seem. Rather than abandon the language completely, as Trenité suggested, let’s examine some of the English words with intriguing pronunciation. The staring had an explanation the young girl was only trying to read lips. Later, the child felt ashamed when she learned the student was deaf. The new girl had a habit of staring at others. In one apocryphal story, a child took an immediate dislike to a new student because of her “odd” behavior. ![]() Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? In his poem “The Chaos,” Dutchman Gerard Nolst Trenité penned the following advice to those attempting to master English phonetics: The above quote from Gertrude Hildreth originally appeared in a 1957 article titled “Some Misconceptions Concerning Phonics.” The full sentence reads: “English is a phonetic language, even though it’s inconsistent to a considerable degree.” Its inconsistencies can be confusing, but amusing too! English language learners have bemoaned its idiosyncrasies for decades. The relationship between spelling and pronunciation is strong. If you know the rules, you can spell any word you hear. The letters in its alphabet consistently correspond to the same sounds and form reliable patterns of pronunciation. First, what does the term “phonetic language” mean? Consider Spanish, a highly phonetic language.
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