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For example, the initial k is not silent in words such as German Knecht which is a cognate of knight, Knoten which is a cognate of knot, etc. Likewise, g was probably a voiced velar plosive and the initial g was not silent: for example, German Gnom , a cognate of gnome , Gneis , a cognate of gneiss , etc.
A silent u can indicate a hard pronunciation in words borrowed from French (as in analogue, league, guide) or words influenced by French spelling conventions (guess, guest); a silent h serves a similar purpose in Italian-derived words (ghetto, spaghetti). A silent e can occur at the end of a word – or at the end of a component root word that ...
In English, gh historically represented [x] (the voiceless velar fricative, as in the Scottish Gaelic word loch), and still does in lough and certain other Hiberno-English words, especially proper nouns. In the dominant dialects of modern English, gh is almost always either silent or pronounced /f/ (see Ough).
Some words contain silent letters, which do not represent any sound in modern English pronunciation. Examples include the l in talk, half, calf, etc., the w in two and sword, gh as mentioned above in numerous words such as though, daughter, night, brought, and the commonly encountered silent e (discussed further below).
The word is intended to be pronounced in the same way as fish (/ f ɪ ʃ /), using these sounds: gh, pronounced / f / as in enough / ɪ ˈ n ʌ f / or tough / t ʌ f /; o, pronounced / ɪ / as in women / ˈ w ɪ m ɪ n /; ti, pronounced / ʃ / as in nation / ˈ n eɪ ʃ ən / or motion / ˈ m oʊ ʃ ən /.
Also note a combination digraph and cluster as seen in length with two digraphs ng , th representing a cluster of two consonants: /ŋθ/ (although it may be pronounced /ŋkθ/ instead, as ng followed by a voiceless consonant in the same syllable often does); lights with a silent digraph gh followed by a cluster t , s : /ts/; and compound words ...
"Silent Running" was one of the first songs to emerge from the Rutherford/Robertson songwriting partnership. It was among a series of songs that the pair wrote in order to test the results of their collaboration. When producer Christopher Neil heard the song on a demo tape that Rutherford played, he recommended that it be used for the album. [9]
Not every English word that contains a gh was originally spelled with a yogh: for example, spaghetti is Italian, where the h makes the g hard (i.e., [ɡ] instead of [dʒ]); ghoul is Arabic, in which the gh was /ɣ/. The medieval author Orm used this letter in three ways when writing Early Middle English.