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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 ...
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.
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.
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 ...
GH pronounced /f/ use F, drop the silent letter in the foregoing digraph: cough→cof, laugh→laf, enough→enuf GH pronounced /ɡ/ use G: aghast→agast, ghost→gost –GM pronounced /m/ use M: apothegm→apothem, paradigm→paradim –GUE after a consonant, a short vowel or a digraph representing a long vowel or diphthong: drop silent –UE
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).