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In Old English, k and g were not silent when preceding n . Cognates in other Germanic languages show that the k was probably a voiceless velar plosive in Proto-Germanic. 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.
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).
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 ...
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 /.
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 ...
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.
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 ...
Prior to 1900, /k/ was written as k , as well as c , ch and q (in words derived from Italian and Latin). Vassalli's 1796 work contained several new letters to represent the sounds of the Maltese language, which included the invention of several ad-hoc letters as well as the importation of Cyrillic ge , che , sha , and ze .