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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).
When gh occurs at the beginning of a word, it is pronounced hard (/ɡ/) as in “ghost” and “ghetto". In a few words of Greek origin, the digraph gm is pronounced /m/ , with the (g) being silent, such as in “phlegm”, “paradigm” and "diaphragm".
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 ...
gh represents /ɡ/ (voiced velar plosive) at the beginning of words (ghost), represents /f/ (voiceless labiodental fricative in enough) or is silent at the end of words (sigh). ph represents /f/ (voiceless labiodental fricative), as in siphon. rh represents English /r/ in words of Greek origin, such as rhythm.
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 ...
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).
In Northern Dutch, /ɣ/ appears immediately before voiced consonants and sometimes also between vowels, but not in the word-initial position. In the latter case, the sound is not voiced and differs from /x/ in length (/ɣ/ is longer) and in that it is produced a little bit further front (mediovelar, rather than postvelar) and lacks any trilling, so that vlaggen /ˈvlɑɣən/ 'flags' has a ...
The lack of spoken words in a silent review, which requires an audience to infer whether a reviewer likes a product or not, may seem silly. However, the same kind of nonverbal communication occurs ...