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Silent letters can distinguish between homophones; e.g., in/inn; be/bee; lent/leant. This is an aid to readers already familiar with both words. Silent letters may give an insight into the meaning or origin of a word; e.g., vineyard suggests vines more than the phonetic *vinyard would.
The English language is notorious for its use of silent letters. In fact, about 60 percent of English words contain a silent letter. In many cases, these silent letters actually were pronounced ...
Variably by dialect and even word, the / j / in this / j uː / may drop (rune / ˈ r uː n /, lute / ˈ l uː t /), causing a merger with / uː /; in other cases, the /j/ coalesces with the preceding consonant (issue / ˈ ɪ s. j uː / → / ˈ ɪ ʃ uː /), meaning that the silent e can affect the quality of a consonant much earlier in the ...
In English orthography, the letter k normally reflects the pronunciation of [] and the letter g normally is pronounced /ɡ/ or "hard" g , as in goose, gargoyle and game; /d͡ʒ/ or "soft" g , generally before i or e , as in giant, ginger and geology; or /ʒ/ in some words of French origin, such as rouge, beige and genre.
The letter occurs very regularly at the end of words, where it represents the long final vowels o/a or e. In the middle of the word, the letter represents either a glottal stop between vowels (but West Syriac pronunciation often makes it a palatal approximant), a long i/e (less commonly o/a) or is silent.
For example, a silent e usually indicates the soft pronunciation, as in change; this may be maintained before a suffix to indicate this pronunciation (as in changeable), despite the rule that usually drops this letter. A silent i can also indicate a soft pronunciation, particularly with the suffixes -gion and -gious (as in region, contagious).
Having pointed letters can mean that you are intense, intelligent, curious and aggressive. People who write with connected letters are associated with being logical and systematic.
The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. [note 7] For this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ʔ , originally had the form of a question mark with the dot removed.