Download CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE FACULTY OF EDUCATION

CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE
FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Department of English Language and Literature
Bachelor Thesis
The Ability of Czech Speakers of English to Pronounce
Words with Silent Letters
Author: Markéta Pospíšilová
Branch of study: English and German
Supervisor: Mgr. Kristýna Poesová, Ph.D.
Prague 2014
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor, Mgr. Kristýna Poesová, Ph.D., for her time,
patience and valuable advice. Besides my supervisor, I would like to express my
gratitude to all the respondents who willingly participated in my research.
Declaration
I hereby declare that this bachelor thesis is my own work and that no other sources were
used in the preparation of the thesis than those listed on the works cited page.
Prague, April 2014
..............................................
Markéta Pospíšilová
Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to show the historical development of silent letters and their
role in contemporary English. In the theoretical part a definition of a silent letter is
provided and the reasons for its emergence are outlined. Moreover, we will concentrate
on individual silent letters and describe in which positions they normally occur. In the
practical part the ability of Czech learners of English to pronounce selected words with
silent letters is assessed. The research includes a comparison of recordings obtained
from students of the first and the fourth year of upper-secondary education.
Key words
Silent
letters,
pronunciation,
spelling,
grapheme-to-phoneme
correspondence,
etymology, analogy.
Anotace
Cílem této bakalářské práce je nastínit historický vývoj anglických němých písmen a
poukázat na jejich roli v současné angličtině. Teoretická část se zaměří na definici
němých písmen a odhalí příčiny jejich vzniku. Práce se dále věnuje jednotlivým němým
písmenům a popisuje, v kterých pozicích se nejčastěji vyskytují. V praktické části se
pak hodnotí schopnost českých studentů vyslovovat slova obsahující němá písmena.
Výzkum se zaměří především na porovnání nahrávek žáků kvinty a oktávy osmiletého
gymnázia.
Klíčová slova
Němá písmena, výslovnost, pravopis, shoda mezi grafémem a fonémem, etymologie,
analogie.
Table of contents
1. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 5
2. Theoretical part ............................................................................................................ 7
2.1 Brief historical development of silent letters ......................................................... 8
2.2 The reasons for the emergence of silent letters.................................................... 10
2.3 Individual silent letters......................................................................................... 11
2.3.1 Vowels .......................................................................................................... 11
2.3.2 Consonants .................................................................................................... 12
2.3.3 Diagraphs ...................................................................................................... 19
2.4 Differences between American and British English ............................................ 20
2.5 Functions and benefits of silent letters ................................................................ 21
2.6 The future of silent letters .................................................................................... 22
3. Practical part .............................................................................................................. 24
3.1 Method ................................................................................................................. 24
3.1.1 Preparation of the text ................................................................................... 24
3.1.2 Participants.................................................................................................... 26
3.1.3 Recording ...................................................................................................... 26
3.2 Results .................................................................................................................. 27
3.2.1 Data processing ............................................................................................. 27
3.2.2 The outcomes of the research ....................................................................... 28
3.2.3 Discussion ..................................................................................................... 35
4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 36
5. Works cited ................................................................................................................ 37
6. Appendices................................................................................................................. 38
1. Introduction
While acquiring a foreign language, we have to get acquainted with its
pronunciation system. Some languages, such as Czech, have transparent letter-to-sound
correspondences. This means that they are close to having a phonemic orthography in
which the spelling of a word clearly suggests its pronunciation. On the other hand, there
are languages with a pretty low degree of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence among
which we can include the English language. From this we can conclude that the Czech
speakers are necessarily bound to have difficulties with the English pronunciation as
they tend to sound the letters that are supposed to be silent as well. I remember being
often confused about these irregularities and asking the teachers why there are letters
represented in the spelling but we do not pronounce them. The answers I got were:
“This is the way it is.” or “You just have to learn this.” I felt frustrated by these answers
and found it impossible to learn such an unsystematic language. Only at the university
did I discover that the issue that had bothered me for so long was known as the
phenomenon of silent letters and that there actually were some reasonable rules to be
found. I regretted not having known them before and thus I decided to explore the issue
of silent letters more thoroughly in order to provide some kind of a manual for those
who like me would have appreciated some explanations.
However, in the quest I had to face some obstacles right from the beginning. I
could not find a book which would deal exclusively with silent letters and the
pronunciation books offered just scanty information. My research therefore required
extensive reading of books devoted to the historical development of the English
language. Apart from that, it turned out that the opinions on silent letters were not
united and a compromise between these had to be reached. Having settled these initial
difficulties I began to work on a thesis in which I would like to show that English is not
as chaotic and unpredictable as it might seem at first sight but that there are some
regular patterns to be found.
In the theoretical part of this thesis we are going to define what silent letters are
and outline the reasons for their emergence throughout the historical development of the
English language. In addition to this, we are going to explore the functions and benefits
they are endowed with and discuss their future prospects. The practical part of this
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thesis puts forward a research that was carried out in order to reveal Czech speakers’
ability to pronounce words with silent letters. The preparation of materials for the
research and the actual recording of two groups of students will be described in detail.
The collected data will be then evaluated and a conclusion about the extent to which the
Czech speakers master the pronunciation of words with silent letters will be drawn.
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2. Theoretical part
The reason why the English language is so difficult to spell and to pronounce is
its lack of direct grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence. The irregular sound-to-symbol
relationship causes problems not only to those who acquire English as a second
language but to native speakers as well. Although this system might seem illogical,
especially to those learners who are used to more transparent correspondences in their
mother tongues, there are some rational explanations to be found.
Firstly, there are 44 phonemes in the English language but only 26 graphemes to
represent them. On account of this, some of the graphemes have to be used to represent
more than one phoneme. For example, the grapheme ˂c˃ is realized as /s/ in the word
cinema and as /k/ in the word car. This functions also the other way round - one
phoneme can be represented by a variety of spellings. This is, for example, the case of
the phoneme /f/ which can be represented in spelling by the following graphemes: ˂ph˃
as in the word photograph, ˂f˃ as in the word fish, ˂gh˃ as in the word rough and ˂ff˃
as in the word cliff (Nosek 19, 46).
Secondly, throughout its long development English has borrowed words from
other languages and simultaneously retained their original spellings. These foreign
languages, however, had different grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences and thus new
inconsistencies in the letter-sound relationship emerged.
Thirdly, one of the goals of the English spelling is to depict aspects of English
morphology and to show visual identity of words. If we compare the words signature
and sign, we will discover that the latter contains a ˂g˃ in spelling, although it is not
pronounced. This example shows us that the tendency of the spelling system toward
morphological transparency often results in the sacrifice of the phonological
transparency (Brinton 20).
Finally, we should mention that the spoken language is constantly developing
and that it takes time for the spelling to reflect the changes, if there is a will to reflect
them at all. Therefore many spellings remain fixed and, in fact, show an earlier stage of
pronunciation.
One of the most apparent inconsistencies of the grapheme-to-phoneme
correspondence is the phenomenon of silent letters. But what exactly is meant by the
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term silent letters? It is surprising, that even though this phenomenon occurs frequently
in the English language, there is no definition that would tell us exactly what a silent
letter is and what it is not. In Volín’s IPA-Based Transcription for Czech Students of
English we can find this: “Some English words are spelt with letters which do not
represent any of their sounds. Know has a silent ʻkʼ, night has a silent ʻghʼ, and come
has a silent ʻeʼ” (37). This would mean that all letters without a direct phonetic
counterpart are silent. Can we therefore claim that there is a silent c in the word black?
Silent ph in the word paragraph? Silent n in words like inn and Ann? Silent h in chaos?
Silent i in fruit and juice? And silent a in bread? The answers to these questions cannot
be given so easily because the opinions of experts differ significantly. According to
Volín, we do not analyze bread as having a silent a because ea is a diagraph and
diagraphs represent just one phoneme (37). This seems like a reasonable argument
which can be applied also to the words fruit and juice. Furthermore, this argument could
be even extended to the other words. The ph in paragraph is not exactly silent but it is
pronounced as /f/. Similarly, the letter combinations ck and ch in the words black and
chaos are pronounced as /k/. Therefore we can also interpret these as diagraphs
representing one phoneme. Collins and Mees would disagree with this statement
because they see the h in words like chaos, stomach and ache as silent (115). However,
we have to realize that these disunited opinions concern only the marginal cases and
that the majority of experts present us with pretty similar instances of silent letters. This
thesis is therefore going to focus on the most transparent examples of silent letters with
special emphasis on silent consonants and their positions within a word.
As was already mentioned above, the correspondences between sounds and
letters are historical and this is true for silent letters as well. To discover why they
emerged and what their function was, we need to look more closely at the historical
development of the English language.
2.1 Brief historical development of silent letters
The Christian missionaries who arrived in Britain in the 6th century adapted the
Latin alphabet and used it for representing the Anglo-Saxon language. At that time
English had 37 phonemes that were represented by 27 letters. The monks thought in a
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phonetic way which meant that in Old English every letter was pronounced. There were
no silent letters (Crystal 12, 20, 25).
However, the system had weaknesses. The Old English era continued until the
Norman invasion in 1066. Then comes the Middle English period which is marked by
major changes in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling. Thousands of new
words from Latin and French entered the language. All these changes had to be
reflected in spelling and the French scribes brought new attitudes and practices. The
most urgent issue must have been the problem of marking the vowel length. The ʻlong
vowelʼ solution was to add a silent e, thus hop is short, and hope is long. The ʻshort
vowelʼ solution was to double the next consonant, thus hopping has a short vowel, and
hoping has a long one (Crystal 41-42). The introduction of silent letters was an utter
novelty because so far every letter had to be pronounced. Even if a consonant was
doubled it would sound twice as long. The introduction of this device therefore caused
that people stopped pronouncing long consonants. During this period the spellings like
cliff, kiss, stuff, mess, lass, ill and others appeared for the first time (Crystal 43, 55).
A great increase in the number of prefixes and suffixes borrowed from Latin and
French is also typical for the Middle English period. In many cases the addition of a
suffix changed the pronunciation of a word: sign with a silent g and signature with the g
pronounced (Crystal 67, 68).
The arrival of printing press in 1476 brought some order to English orthography
but at the same time William Caxton introduced more exceptions and the existing
irregularities had frozen in the spelling (Crystal 136).
By the 16th century, the amount of irregularity in English was so great that a
reform was needed. One of the solutions was to make more use of Latin. As most
people knew Latin, it was thought to be a helpful device in reducing the spelling
inconsistencies. For example the word myrrh got its h from Latin myrrha in order to
cope with the variety of earlier spellings, such as murra, mirra, etc. This etymological
approach is responsible for the introduction of a great number of silent letters. People
valued this change at that time but today, with most people lacking Latin, silent letters
are seen rather as a hindrance than a help (Crystal 155, 156).
At the start of the Early Modern English period some consonant clusters were
simplified. People ceased to pronounce certain consonants in certain positions. For
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example, the /k/ in initial consonant sequence kn was dropped (Schmitt and Marsden
123). These changes were not reflected in the spelling and as a result of this, a new set
of silent letters appeared.
The modern spelling patterns were formulated during the Middle English and
Early Modern English period. By the end of the 17th century, a fixed spelling for every
word was firmly established for printed works. Over the course of the following
century, people followed the rules in their personal spelling too (Millward 225).
2.2 The reasons for the emergence of silent letters
As was already stated above, silent letters were introduced due to various
reasons. It started in the Middle English period by the decision to use silent e and
double consonants to show vowel length. But it did not end with that. People are always
ready to accept changes which bring the minimization of articulatory effort.
Consequently, simplification can be seen as another reason for the emergence of silent
letters. The regular tendency for consonant clusters to be simplified resulted in the
dropping of k, g, w and t in the words knight, gnat, write and castle during the 17th
century. Another example would be the word cupboard in which the p was completely
assimilated into the b and finally lost from its pronunciation. Unfortunately, the spelling
of these words did not change to match the lost sounds (Schmitt and Marsden 122, 123).
Apart from simplification, many silent letters were the result of etymological
respellings. The tendency of turning to Latin roots in order to regulate English spelling
is typical for the 16th century. Etymological reasoning gradually became a major factor
in decision making over spelling. Many silent letters were just added to words to
resemble their Latin origin: Subtle got its b from subtilis (earlier spellings were sotill,
sutell, etc.). Indict got its c from dictare (earlier endite, indite, etc.) Receipt got its p
from recepta (earlier recyt, resseit, etc.). Salmon got its l from salmo (earlier samoun,
sammon, etc.). The h pronounced in modern habit was a Latin addition too, from
habitus (earlier abit, abyt, etc.) (Crystal 156).
The last source of silent letters is analogy. This is a tendency for words with
sound similarities to be spelled in the same way. Analogy can be seen operating
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throughout the history of English spelling. To demonstrate how analogy works we
should take a closer look at the word delight:
This is what happened to delight. When it arrived in English from French it was
spelled with such forms as delit and delyte. There were a few other words with the same
kind of spelling variation and the same sound – (in modern spelling) cite, site, bite, kite,
quite and mite. But these were a small group compared with all the words which were
being spelled with -ight, some of which were of very high frequency in the language –
might, fight, light, right, flight, bright, height, night, sight, tight, wight, knight ... The
result was that several of the -ite words began to be spelled with -ight, and in the case of
delight the revised spelling stayed. (Crystal 122)
2.3 Individual silent letters
In the following section we are going to learn more about individual silent
letters, their positions, functions and reasons for their origin. To ensure clarity, silent
letters have been divided into three categories – vowels, consonants and diagraphs.
These are going to be presented successively.
2.3.1 Vowels
The phenomenon of silent letters does not really concern English vowels. When
a vowel occurs in a stressed position it has to be pronounced and a silent version does
not come into consideration. In unstressed positions vowels are usually reduced and
silent realizations are only optional (e.g. a in the suffix of the word practically).
Therefore the main focus of this thesis is on silent consonants. Nevertheless, there are
two silent vowels that ought to be mentioned and that is silent e and u. Strictly speaking,
these are not letters in the right sense of the word because they have never represented
any spoken sound. They were introduced to show the pronunciation of another letter.
These silent letters play an important role in English and their presentation to students
might be beneficial.
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˂e˃
Silent e is in the English language used for two purposes. The first one is to
show lengthening or diphthongization of the vowel in the preceding syllable. Thus hat
is short and hate is long. The other purpose is to show the quality of the preceding
consonant. Therefore g followed by e, is to be pronounced /ʤ/ like in rage (compare
with rag), and c is to be pronounced /s/ like in entice (compare with antic) (Schmitt and
Marsden 160). These rules are, of course, not absolute and there are many exceptions to
be found. For example, the verbs love, live, have, give, gone, come and done all contain
silent e but we pronounce the preceding syllable as short. Although the fact that the rule
does not apply to all words might be discouraging, we have to realize that all these
words are common and that students usually have no problems with pronouncing them.
˂u˃
Silent u is a useful device for recognising hard g /g/ from soft g /ʤ/. It occurs in
the letter sequences gu and gue and in these positions it is always silent. Its function is
to indicate the pronunciation of hard g /g/ in words, such as guest, guitar and league
(Collins and Mees 14).
2.3.2 Consonants
As was already stated above, the main emphasis of this thesis lays on silent
consonants which will be investigated alphabetically in the following section. The
letters f, j, q and v are excluded from the list as they are always sounded in English.
˂b˃
There are two positions in which the letter b is silent. The first instance is the
word-final b after m. This sequence of letters is in Modern English pronounced as /m/.
There are two reasons why the final b ceased to be pronounced: simplification and
analogy.
In Old English, there were several words which ended in -mb, with both of the
letters pronounced – dumb, coomb, comb, climb, womb, lamb. People stopped
pronouncing the b at a later date: the two sounds /m/ and /b/ are both made with the two
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lips, and plainly it was felt that the extra effort needed to sound a b after an m was
unnecessary. So a ʻsilentʼ b emerged. But the -mb spelling must have stayed
prominently in mind, for we see in Middle English new words arriving that were never
pronounced with a final b, and yet they are given one in the spelling: plom becomes
plumb, nom becomes numb. And Old English words with a final m but lacking a b were
affected too: we find ϸuma, crum and lim in Old English, but people started to spell
them thumb, crumb and limb. And when tomb arrived in the 13th century from French
toumbe, with a b, it silently followed the pattern – as did in later centuries succumb,
bomb and aplomb. (Crystal 123)
Apart from the word-final sequence -mb, silent b occurs also before t. This is
mainly because of the Latin influence. During the 16th century people turned to
etymology and therefore the silent consonants had to be written in order to show the
original derivation of the word. The best example to illustrate this trend is the word
debt. It came to English from French dette in the early Middle Ages and it had various
spellings such as det, dett, dette, deytt. The need to unify the variety of spellings was
solved by using the Latin source of this word – debitum. The letter b was added to the
word but the pronunciation stayed the same /det/. People accepted this change because
they were well aware of Latin and the introduction of silent b seemed like a helpful
device at that time. The new spelling debt spread thus very quickly. The word doubt had
a similar history. It got its b from the Latin word dubitare (Crystal 154-155).
˂c˃
Silent c emerged also in the 16th century because of the classical influence. The
word indict was earlier spelt as endite, indite, etc. but it got its c from the Latin word
dictare. Similarly the word arctic got its c from arcticus (earlier spellings artik, artyke,
etc.) and the word victuals from victualis (earlier spellings vitaile, vitayle, etc.)
However, the c in arctic eventually came to be pronounced by some speakers (Crystal
156).
The Latin influence on spelling was huge but some mistakes were made from
time to time. This happened mainly because the original source of the word was
identified inaccurately. A good example would be the word scissors. “(…) spelling
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enthusiasts thought that it came from the Latin word scindere ʻto cutʼ. In fact, it comes
from cisorium, ʻcutting instrumentʼ. If the Latin were being accurately reflected, it
should be spelled cissors” (Crystal 160).
Apart from etymology, there is another cause for silent c – simplification of the
sequence ct /kt/ which might be a little difficult to pronounce. Although it does not
concern many words, it is definitely worth mentioning.
(…) pronouncing ct /kt/ involves quite a tricky tongue movement – first the back
of the tongue makes contact with the roof of the mouth and then, very rapidly, the front
of the tongue. The stage is set for simplification – and this is what happened. People
didn’t pronounce the c. It‘s a simplification we sometimes see in other words.
Americans don’t pronounce the c before t in Connecticut. Lots of people don’t
pronounce the c in adjunct. (Crystal 158)
To conclude, silent c can appear in two positions: after s in words like scent,
scene, science or muscle and before t in indict, victuals, arctic and Connecticut.
˂d˃
The consonant /d/ tended to drop in consonant clusters involving /s/ during the
Early Modern English period. Hence the Modern English pronunciation of handsome
without /d/ (Millward 216). Silent d is not a very frequent phenomenon. It always
occurs in medial sequences but in many cases it depends on the speaker whether the d is
pronounced or not. The words like handsome, Wednesday, handkerchief or Windsor are
in most cases pronounced without /d/. On the other hand there are words which are
pronounced either with or without d. This concerns words like landscape, sandwich,
grandfather, blindness, kindness, windscreen, hands-off etc. Silent d in these cases
might be a result of simplification. The speaker saves himself some effort when not
pronouncing it.
˂g˃
Silent g appears in Modern English in the initial and final sequence gn. If we
want to discover why g in this sequence of letters ceased to be pronounced, we need to
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follow its development throughout the history of the English language. In the Old
English period the initial g in the word gnat had been syllabic, which means pronounced
as a separate syllable. During the Middle English period and at the start of Early
Modern English the initial g in gnat was still usually pronounced, as it had been in Old
English. By 1700 the initial sound was reduced to /n/ but this change was not reflected
in the spelling (Schmitt and Marsden 123,134). The reason for silent g in final
sequences is the French origin of these words. Deign, benign, sign, align and reign all
come from French, or Latin via French. The French do not pronounce g in these words
and neither did the English when they borrowed them (Crystal 163).
Silent g can be also found in the word-final -gm in words like paradigm, phlegm
and diaphragm.
˂h˃
The story of silent h is rather complex. In the Anglo-Saxon times initial h was
regularly pronounced. The situation was changed after the Norman Conquest with the
influx of French loanwords beginning with h. The phoneme /h/ was lost in the AngloNorman dialect, and sometimes the h disappeared from spelling as well (Schmitt and
Marsden 140). As Nevalainen mentions “/h/ was not pronounced in habit, heritage,
history, honour, host and similar words (…) but in most cases it was subsequently
reintroduced on etymological grounds” (126). By the end of the 19th century it was
permissible to omit the h only in four French loanwords: heir, honest, honour and hour
(Schmitt and Marsden 141).
Silent h can be also found in the initial cluster wh-. This consonant pair was
written as hw in the Old English period which reflected its pronunciation more
accurately. However, Middle English scribes preferred the writing wh and thus Old
English hwᴂt became what. During the Middle English period the h gradually ceased to
be pronounced, at least in the Southern dialect. In the North, however, the h in this
sequence was not lost. It survives to this day in some types of English, including the
speech of much of the United States (Pyles and Algeo 140, 146).
Apart from the initial sequence wh, silent h occurs after r and k in foreign
loanwords such as khaki, rhapsody, rhinoceros, rhotic, rhyme, myrrh, etc. (Collins and
Mees 115).
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Finally, silent h appears in medial positions after ex- in words like exhaust or
exhilarate, and in intervocalic positions in words, such as vehicle, vehement, annihilate
(Collins and Mees 115).
˂k˃
There is just one position in which silent k can occur in Modern English and that
is initial k preceding n. This initial sequence of letters is pronounced as /n/. Words
containing this initial cluster can be traced back to the Old English period. The Old
English cnāwan and cnafa became the Middle English knowe(n) and knave. The
/k/ continued to be pronounced throughout the Middle English period but probably in
the late 17th century people stopped pronouncing it (Millward 128, 216). Therefore in
Modern English we pronounce the words know and knife as /nəʊ/ and /naɪf/.
˂l˃
The letter l became silent during the Early Modern English period. The reasons
for the introduction of silent l were various. As was already stated above, the 16th
century is famous for returning to Latin roots. Etymology gives us therefore explanation
of why so many words contain silent l.
Salmon got its l from salmo (earlier samoun, sammon, etc.); balm from
balsamum (earlier bawm, bame, etc.); falcon from falco (earlier faukun, faucoun, etc.);
fault from fallitus (earlier faut, fawt, etc.) and assault from assultus (earlier assaut,
assawte, etc.). In some cases, the new consonant eventually came to be pronounced, as
in fault. (Crystal 156)
Another cause for silent l is analogy. The auxiliary verbs would, should and
could look the same now but there was no l in could originally (in Old English it was
cuðe). As the Old English forms wolde and sholde developed into would and should in
late Middle English, people started to write an l in could as well (Crystal 122).
As we have seen, analogy affects only the auxiliary verb could and is therefore
only a marginal cause for the emergence of silent l. However, the Early Modern English
period brought other changes. The l in pre-consonantal al was lost after becoming /ɔ/ as
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in talk and walk but except before f, v and m where it became /ᴂ/ in such words as half,
salve and psalm. The sequence al preceding f, v and m nowadays corresponds to /ɑ:/.
The l of ol was similarly lost before certain consonants by vocalization, as in folk, yolk,
Holmes, and the like (Pyles and Algeo 178).
˂m˃
Silent m is extremely rare in English and occurs only initially preceding n as in
mnemonic.
˂n˃
The letter n is silent in the word-final sequence mn. It requires effort to
pronounce this combination of consonants so we cannot wonder that it had been
reduced to /m/ over time. Words like autumn and hymn (from Latin autumnus and
hymnus) lost their final /n/ sound because of the difficult pronunciation.
At this point, one interesting fact should be mentioned. Although there were ns
also in the Latin origins of column and damn, analogy caused that these words were
spelled with silent b for a while: columb and damb. But in the 16th century, the feeling
must have arisen that a silent n ending was better because it reflected the Latin sources
(columnus, dumnare). The n was also pronounced in related words, such as columnary
and damnation. All other spellings – collum, collume, etc. soon died out (Crystal 159).
˂p˃
Silent p can be found in initial sequences ps, pn and pt which are in most cases
parts of foreign prefixes. Some examples would be psychology, pseudonym, pneumonia
and pterodactyl (Celce-Murcia 437).
There are also some exceptional words that received silent p owing to various
reasons. Words like raspberry and cupboard contain the letter combination pb which is
not easy to pronounce. It is therefore highly probable that the reason for silent p in these
cases is simplification. But the word receipt has a different story. The letter p was
inserted in this word in the 16th century because of etymological reasons. Crystal
mentions that “receipt got its p from recepta (earlier recyt, resseit, etc.)” (156).
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˂r˃
Until about 1700, r was always pronounced before another consonant (as in
carve, person) and finally (as in far, mother). However, in standard British English and
in other non-rhotic accents dropping nowadays prevails in these contexts. An exception
is when r is followed by a vowel. The tendency to drop the final r probably began in the
17th century but was completed only in the 18th. In some varieties of English, however,
the change did not take place and r continues to be pronounced, for example, in General
American, Irish English and the speech of Scots (Schmitt and Marsden 134).
˂s˃
Silent s is not particularly frequent in English. It occurs in a few exceptional
words such as aisle, isle, islet, island and viscount, and then in recent loans from French
like chassis, chamois, debris, precis and rendezvous (Collins and Mees 116).
˂t˃
Silent t can be usually found after f, s and before -en or -le in words such as
castle, listen, often and soften. The reason for emergence of silent t is once again
simplification which took place during the Early Modern period. We can still hear the /t/
in Christmas nowadays but it is being left out more and more. In the case of often, the t
was originally pronounced until about the 17th century, after which it became
fashionable to drop it, but in recent times, it is common to hear it again (Schmitt and
Marsden 123).
Another source of silent t are recent loans from French such as ballet, buffet and
mortgage (Collins and Mees 116).
˂w˃
There are several positions in which we can find silent w. Most apparently it
occurs in initial sequences wh and wr. But there are also other words containing silent w
such as answer, sword, two and some place names ending in -wich/-wick like
Greenwich and Warwick. The words answer, sword and two lost their w due to
pronunciation change that took place during the Middle English period. The /w/ was
dropped between s, t and a vowel but in these words it was retained in spelling. The
18
initial sequence wr lost its first sound much later. Words like wrong, wrinkle and wrist
started to be pronounced without /w/ during the 18th century (Millward 127, 216).
It is not without interest that the words whole and whore were originally spelled
as hal and hore, that is, without w. The letter w started to appear in their spellings in the
15th century as a result of analogy. They were simply influenced by other words
beginning with wh (Crystal 124).
˂x˃
Silent x is not typical for the English language. Nevertheless, we can find it in
some foreign words such as faux pas and Sioux.
˂z˃
Similarly to silent x, silent z does not occur in English but it can be found in a
recent loanword from French: rendezvous.
2.3.3 Diagraphs
The diagraphs gh and th are also going to be listed among silent letters because
at least one of their realizations is silent.
˂gh˃
The diagraph gh has got three realizations. In the first one, h is silent and the
diagraph is pronounced as /g/ in syllable-initial positions. This concerns words like
ghost, ghetto and spaghetti. The second realization of the grapheme gh is /f/. It occurs in
word-final gh/ght in such words as cough, enough and draught. The last realization is
the one that interests us most – the silent one. Silent gh can be found in word-final and
word-medial positions. In words like right, night, daughter, through and caught, gh
ceased to be pronounced in the course of the historical development.
The Old English sounds /x/ and /ç/ were represented in the spelling with h. In the
Middle English period French scribes preferred the spelling gh to represent these two
sounds. That gh was pronounced but it was a pronunciation that was dying out. The
spelling, however, did not disappear along with the sound because by the time the
pronunciation change was widespread the new spellings had become thoroughly
19
established. From that moment on, we can find instances of silent gh in right, might,
daughter, through and so on (Crystal 83).
˂th˃
The diagraph th is usually realized as /θ/ or /ð/ but there are two exceptions in
which this diagraph is silent. The words concerned are asthma and isthmus.
2.4 Differences between American and British English
In the following section we are going to look at some pronunciation differences
between American and British English with respect to silent letters. The most apparent
difference between these two varieties is rhoticity. Whereas General American is rpronouncing, British Received Pronunciation tends to drop r in all positions except
before vowels. To find out what had caused this difference we need to explore the
historical background of this phenomenon. The early settlers who came to America
during the Early Modern English period were r-pronouncing because this was common
in Britain at that time. When, later on, people in Britain stopped pronouncing the /r/
sound, the American variety of English no longer participated in this change because of
lack of contact with the mother country (Vachek 45).
Another difference concerns place names. In 1890 the Board of Geographic
Names was founded in America to deal with inconsistencies in spelling and
pronunciation. As a result the spellings of places containing silent letters were changed
to reflect the actual pronunciation more accurately: places ending in -burgh became
-burg and those ending in -borough became -boro (Crystal 207-208). However, this did
not mean that all silent letters disappeared from American place names. One exception
would be c in the word Connecticut – it stayed in spelling but Americans do not
pronounce it (Crystal 158).
The last example that should be mentioned while speaking about regional
differences is the word herb. In the British standard the h at the beginning is
pronounced but in the American variety h is silent (Schmitt and Marsden 141).
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2.5 Functions and benefits of silent letters
Although it might seem surprising, silent letters fulfil certain functions in the
English language and can be beneficial. The functions outlined in the following part
should demonstrate that it would not be easy to get rid of them.
The first function refers to the use of silent e to mark the vowel length. Silent e
was used for this purpose already in the Middle English period and it plays a crucial
role even in contemporary English. Its use is highly regular – silent e signals to the
reader that the vowel in the preceding syllable is pronounced either long or as a
diphthong. This principle can be applied to the majority of English word stock and the
deletion of silent e would cause confusion. Without the silent e we would be left
without a clue about how to differentiate between words, such as hate/hat, hope/hop,
care/car, cope/cop, mope/mop and many others.
Silent letters also help us to distinguish homophones. Although the context
usually tells us which word was meant, coming across an isolated word may result in
doubts about the actual meaning. In written form, silent letters help us tell apart words,
such as hour/our, know/no, two/too, knight/night, write/right/rite, reign/rain etc.
Another distinguishing function relates to those silent letters introduced as a
consequence of the three letter rule. Their actual function was to draw a line between
grammatical and lexical words. The Old English scribes left grammatical words short
because of their frequent occurrence (easier to write) and these had to be somehow
differentiated from similarly looking lexical words. The ʻshort word ruleʼ was therefore
this: the lexical words in English must be at least three letters long. The solution was
either doubling the final consonant or adding a silent e. Thus the spelling difference
between the preposition in and the noun inn and between other words like an/Ann,
by/bye. The three letter rule is also the reason why we have silent consonants in the
following words: add, egg, ebb, odd, err, ill (Crystal 263).
Apart from the distinguishing function, silent letters are also important for
showing the visual identity of words and keeping the morphological and etymological
transparency. Silent letters are in some cases kept in the words in order to be restored
under certain conditions. A silent letter can be pronounced when the syllable structure
of a word is changed by the addition of a derivational affix. This process is known
21
under the term resyllabification. The variation in pronunciation due to resyllabification
can be seen in the following examples: sign x signature, bomb x bombard, solemn x
solemnity, resign x resignation, paradigm x paradigmatic, damn x damnation etc.
(Celce-Murcia 438).
To conclude, silent letters perform a host of functions in English and after taking
a closer look at them, it appears that they are not just a hindrance to pronunciation but
can be beneficial.
2.6 The future of silent letters
Because the majority of the native speakers of English today are literate, spelling
pronunciations have had a greater influence on the phonology of contemporary English
than in the past. The sounds lost long ago are being reintroduced in pronunciation. For
example, you can frequently hear /h/ in forehead, /p/ in clapboard, and /t/ in often (but
in silhouette, cupboard and soften, the h, p, and t are not pronounced). Occasionally,
spelling pronunciations take over entire patterns. Many young people in the USA
regularly pronounce /l/ in calm, palm, psalm, balm and alms. This tendency has not yet
spread to talk, chalk, folk and yolk, but could do so in the future (Millward 267, 268).
Apart from spelling pronunciations, the influence of the Internet on English
should be mentioned. We do not know to what extent this medium will influence the
English spelling, but it is likely that a simplification of the most irregular spellings will
be one of the outcomes (Crystal 216). Some silent letters might disappear from the
spelling like, for example, the h in rhubarb. David Crystal has been following the fate
of the h in the Google database over the past few years and this is the result:
In 2006 there were just a few hundred instances of rubarb; in 2008 a few
thousand; in 2010 there were 91,000; at the beginning of 2011 this had increased to
657,000, and by the end of the year it had passed a million. The ratios are the interesting
thing: those 91,000 instances of rubarb in 2010 compared to 3,210,000 instances of
rhubarb – a ratio of 1:35. The following year, 657,000 rubarbs compared to 13 million
rhubarbs – a ratio of 1:20. And later that year rubarb passed the million mark. If it
22
carries on like this, rubarb will overtake rhubarb as the commonest spelling in the next
five years. (Crystal 221)
From what we have seen above, we can conclude that the future of silent letters
is unclear – some of them may disappear from the spelling but some, on the other hand,
come to be pronounced. There have been many attempts to reform the English spelling
and in this way to dispose of silent letters. However, these attempts have been rather
unsuccessful. The reason might be that silent letters perform important functions in the
language and their abandoning would lead to mayhem. An important role probably also
plays the fact, that people are generally not willing to accept changes and become
accustomed to novelties. It seems that we will have to wait and see what will happen to
silent letters in the future.
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3. Practical part
So far, we have been mainly occupied with the theoretical knowledge about
silent letters. We have discussed that for Czech learners who are accustomed to direct
grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences from their mother tongue silent letters represent
a completely new concept. On account of this, we may assume that they will tend to
sound these letters under the negative influence of the Czech language. In the practical
part of this thesis we will be therefore interested in exploring Czech speakers’ ability to
pronounce words with silent letters correctly. We are going to assess to what extent the
Czech learners are aware of this phenomenon and which words cause them most
difficulties. For these purposes we are going to carry out a research in which two groups
of students of different age and language level are to be compared, namely the students
of the first and the fourth year of upper-secondary education. Bearing in mind that the
pronunciation skills are likely to develop over time, the following hypothesis was
formulated:
The older and more advanced students will make fewer pronunciation mistakes in
words containing silent letters than the younger students with a lower level of English.
3.1 Method
In the following section the method employed in the research is going to be
outlined. First, we will take a closer look at the criteria influencing the creation of the
text for the recording. Then we will get acquainted with the participants of the
experiment, and finally, the actual process of the recording will be depicted.
3.1.1 Preparation of the text
In order to evaluate the hypothesis an original text was created. Preference was
given to a continuous text over a list of individual sentences to ensure that the
respondents would not guess what is tested. The text was composed to fulfil the
following criteria.
24
Firstly, the students should be familiar with the majority of the words that are
tested. Therefore the words containing silent letters were mostly chosen from the course
books that the respondents work with on a regular basis (New Opportunities
Intermediate and Upper Intermediate) to guarantee that the students have come across
them before.
Secondly, all three categories: silent vowels, silent consonants and silent
diagraphs should be represented in the text. Silent u was chosen as the subject of testing
from the vowel group and silent gh was selected as the representative of the diagraph
group because the other candidate – silent th is extremely rare in English. Nevertheless,
the main stress still lays on silent consonants.
Thirdly, some common and frequent words were included in the text as well.
This enables us to check whether the students have mastered the correct pronunciation
of some elementary words, such as Wednesday, Christmas, talk, walk, half, listen,
could, which, what and when.
Finally, the text covers some problematic words in which students often make
mistakes. This includes silent h in hour, vehicle and exhausted; silent w in sword, wrist
and wrong; silent b in climb and bomb; silent c in science and muscle; silent p in
psychological and receipt; silent k in knight, knife and knee; and silent t in castle and
fasten.
Each of the chosen silent letters is represented in the text by at least two example
words. This was done on purpose to make it possible to recognize accidental incorrect
pronunciation. Having considered all these criteria, the total number of the chosen silent
letter words reached 34. These words were then arranged and inserted into a text with
the aim to create a meaningful unit. This is the result:
I woke up on Wednesday morning in the early hours because it was Christmas and I had
so much work ahead of me. First, I wanted to decorate the tree. I brought coloured lights
and a ladder. I climbed up to fasten them on the tree but something went wrong and I
fell down like a bomb. I landed on my knees and wrists. When I stood up I tried if I
could walk. Fortunately, I had only pulled a muscle. Nevertheless, after this accident, I
was only able to wait for the guests and meanwhile listen to some carols. My friends
arrived in John’s vehicle at half past five. They put the presents under the tree and I
25
tried to guess what was inside. Later, I discovered that they bought me a psychological
science-fiction book in which I found a forgotten receipt. Apart from that, I got a pocket
knife, a wooden sword, a paper model of a castle and some toy knights. Then we talked
about my accident and late at night I went exhausted to bed.
3.1.2 Participants
The respondents who took part in the research were the students of Gymnázium
Budějovická. This high school has an eight-year programme from which the students of
the fifth and the eighth year (first and fourth year of upper-secondary education) were
chosen for the purposes of our experiment. It should also be mentioned that all the
participants are Czech speakers and that English is their second or third language. The
younger students are fifteen or sixteen years old and their level of English corresponds
to B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference. All of them have been
studying English for at least five years. The students from the other group are eighteen
or nineteen and their English is in compliance with the B2 level. Most of them
encountered English already at grammar school which means that they have been
studying this language for more than eight years. Both groups are taught by the same
teacher who admits that he does not put any special emphasis on developing
pronunciation skills. Pronunciation exercises are mostly skipped and students are just
corrected from time to time when they mispronounce a word. To what extent this
approach influences the students’ pronunciation of silent letters should come out in our
research in which fifteen students from each group were examined.
3.1.3 Recording
The recording took place at Gymnázium Budějovická in Prague on the 29th of
March 2014. For the purposes of the recording we were provided with a drawing room
that was located on the top floor and therefore quiet. Before the recording started all
respondents were assured that the research was strictly anonymous and that they would
not be graded for their performance. Having taken this into account, the majority of the
students felt relaxed during the recording. The participants were then asked to come one
by one into the drawing room where they were given some time to have a look at the
26
text before reading it aloud. After that the recording began. On average it took them
about one minute and fifteen seconds to read the whole text. At this pace it turned out
manageable to record fifteen students during one class. The recording medium used in
this research was a mobile phone (Apple iPhone 4). Apart from that, some notes were
taken in the course of the experiment. These notes later proved helpful while analysing
the recorded material. It should also be mentioned that the respondents were very
enthusiastic and interested in the aim of the research. The purpose of the experiment
was revealed to them after the recording was over.
3.2 Results
In this part of the thesis we are going to assess the collected data, explain the
procedure adopted for the data processing and comment on the calculated results.
3.2.1 Data processing
When all the data was collected, three tables were created to take the gained
pieces of information down (see appendix 2, 3 and 4). In the first column of each table
we can find the silent letter words successively as they appeared in the text whereas the
first row features the respondents. The data that was extracted from the recorded
material was then put into the tables. For the purposes of the evaluation the following
marking system was used: when the target word was pronounced correctly, which
means without the silent letter, the corresponding cell was marked with 0, but when the
silent letter was sounded the cell was marked with 1. This also enabled easy counting of
the mistakes.
In some cases, however, the evaluation was more intricate as the respondents
pronounced a completely different word. For example, three students of the fifth year
had problems with the word psychological. They pronounced it as physiological,
philosophical and “philogical”. In addition to this, the word vehicle was once
pronounced as “vicicle”, the word exhausted as “exoted” and one instance of taught
instead of talked appeared as well. It was decided that these six cases will not be
assessed and therefore they are not included in the analysis. In the tables they are
represented by an empty cell. A similar problem arose with the words brought and
27
bought which were confused with each other in four instances. It is not without interest
that the respondents from the eighth year pronounced brought instead of bought
whereas the participants from the fifth year pronounced bought instead of brought.
However, as these words contain the same silent diagraph and because there is a high
probability that the confusion was accidental, they will not be excluded from the
analysis. In the tables these words are to be found in green frames.
There is one more difficulty that had to be dealt with while processing the data.
In some words it turned out hard to distinguish whether the silent letter was pronounced
or not. This was mainly the case of silent l in walk, talked and half. The words receipt
and climbed were sometimes problematic as well because some students mumbled the
endings of these words. It was therefore necessary to examine the recordings several
times with longer time intervals. Apart from that, the notes taken while recording were
consulted. These notes proved to be useful for the analysis as they completed the
missing information.
The last thing to be mentioned is the marking of the unknown words. The
students were asked prior to the recording whether they had found any unfamiliar words
in the text. These words were written down and they are marked by red frames in the
tables. The unfamiliarity with a word is taken into consideration as it might be the
reason why the respondent pronounced the particular word incorrectly. And this fact
should be reflected in the assessment.
3.2.2 The outcomes of the research
Having described the data processing we can now move to the actual outcomes.
First, we will concentrate on the performance of the individual groups and then we will
put these two groups together and examine them as a whole.
In both groups fifteen students were asked to read a text containing 34 words
with silent letters. That makes the total number of 510 words that were tested in each
group. The students of the fifth year pronounced the silent letter in 125 cases (see
appendix 2) which means that 24,51% of the target words were pronounced incorrectly.
Even if we exclude the words that were reported as unknown by the students from the
analysis, the percentage of errors remains still high – 23,33%. The fact that almost a
quarter of the target words were mispronounced might be seen as surprising. Therefore
28
we should now focus on the problematic words. Out of the 34 tested words 17 words
appeared to cause difficulties to the respondents (see chart 1).
Chart 1 Words that caused problems to the students of the fifth year.
Among these we can find some common words, such as Wednesday, wrong, talked and
walk but also some more challenging words, such as climbed, muscle, fasten,
psychological and sword. The five words that turned out most problematic will be
brought forward with the number of incorrect instances in the brackets: bomb (14),
vehicle (13), receipt (13), exhausted (13) and half (11). This data shows that the word
bomb proved to be most troublesome with only one participant pronouncing it correctly.
The words vehicle, receipt and exhausted ended up close behind. What might also seem
unexpected is the high number of errors in the relatively common word half whose
correct pronunciation should have been acquired by this time. Having discussed the five
biggest troublemakers we are left with the last three instances of incorrect pronunciation
that have not been commented on yet. The first of them represents the sounded w in
wrist which was pronounced by a student who admitted that the word was new to him.
Although the incorrect pronunciation might have been caused by the unfamiliarity with
29
the word, we should take into consideration that this respondent pronounced the w also
in wrong and therefore it seems that the reason for the mistake is rather the incorrect
adoption of the pronunciation pattern. The second instance is the sounded u in the word
guest. In this case, however, the student pronounced the u only in one of the tested
words. In the word guess the u was omitted and the incorrect pronunciation of the
former might be thus perceived as accidental. Finally, we should mention that the word
castle was once pronounced with the t. This case can be assessed as marginal since all
the other participants pronounced it correctly. Overall the number of mistakes made by
the students ranged between five and thirteen.
The students of the eighth year made 97 mistakes in the target words which
means that they acquitted themselves better than the first group (see appendix 3). They
mispronounced 19,02% of all the tested words, 18,63% if we do not count the two
words which were reported as unfamiliar. Nevertheless, this leads to the conclusion that
the students erred in almost one-fifth of all cases which is still a high number. Out of the
whole set 16 words were pronounced incorrectly by the participants (see chart 2).
Chart 2 Words that caused problems to the students of the eighth year.
30
The problematic words were the same as in the former group with the exception of the
word wrist which was pronounced correctly by all students of the eighth year. The five
mostly mispronounced words, however, differed to some extent from those described in
the previous group. They will be again presented with the number of errors in the
brackets: exhausted (13), half (12), bomb (11), vehicle (11) and fasten (10). We can see
that these words caused difficulties to the majority of the respondents. The word
exhausted was pronounced correctly just twice and the word half only three times. The
word bomb has moved from the first position to the second/third and generally, it could
be observed that the number of mistakes tended to decrease. On the other hand, we can
notice that the range of mistakes made by the participants is a bit wider, it is moving
between one and ten. As there are some other differences in the results between the two
groups, we will describe them in more details.
It was already mentioned that the respondents from both groups made mistakes
in the same words. The number of errors in individual words, however, differed (see
chart 3).
Chart 3 A comparison of the words that caused problems to the students of the fifth
and the eighth year.
31
In ten cases we can see an improvement. This concerns the words climbed, wrong,
bomb, wrists, walk, muscle, vehicle, psychological, receipt and talked. The progress
seems significant by the words climbed, receipt and talked but by others it is rather
subtle. In five cases the number of errors stayed the same. This is the case of the words
Wednesday, fasten, guests, castle and exhausted. Whereas the incorrect pronunciation of
Wednesday, guests and castle seems to be only marginal, the number of mistakes in the
words fasten and exhausted remains alarmingly high. Apart from this, the collected data
revealed another interesting fact. In two instances the number of errors was actually
higher by the group of the older students. They made more mistakes in the words half
and sword. The difference was just one word but we can still see that these words cause
difficulties to a similar extent in both groups and should be focused on in the classes.
Although we can overall observe a tendency towards improvement, the performance of
the older students is not convincing as they failed to pronounce almost one-fifth of the
target words correctly. The reasons for this high number of errors cannot be found in the
unfamiliarity with the tested words since the vast majority of the older respondents
knew all of them. Only two students admitted that they did not know the word receipt
and pronounced it then incorrectly. These two instances, however, do not influence the
overall statistics significantly and we are still left with 18,63% instances of incorrect
pronunciation.
After we have discussed and compared the results of both groups, we are going
to look at all participants of the research as a whole. The examination of the collected
data should thus reveal how the Czech speakers deal with silent letters. Altogether thirty
respondents took part in the experiment in which 1020 words containing silent letters
were tested (see appendix 4). The students pronounced the silent letter in 222 cases
which means that 21,76% of the target words were mispronounced. If we exclude those
mistakes that might have been caused by the unfamiliarity with the word from the
analysis, the percentage slightly decreases – 21,08%. Nevertheless, it still means that
every fifth word was pronounced incorrectly. On average each student sounded the
silent letter in seven cases out of 34. The arithmetic mean, however, might be a little
misleading as the number of mistakes ranged between one and thirteen. The outstanding
participant who made just one mistake was the student of the eighth year who confessed
spending one year in the United States and his almost perfect pronunciation seems to be
32
the result of this experience. This student therefore does not exactly represent an
average Czech speaker of the English language and we should concentrate more on the
performance of the other students.
It turned out that the participants had no problems with half of the target words.
The seventeen words that were pronounced correctly in all cases are the following:
knee, knights, knife, when, meanwhile, what, which, light, night, brought, bought,
Christmas, listen, could, hours, guess and science. From these results we can draw a
conclusion that the students have adopted the correct pronunciation pattern of the
consonant sequences kn, wh and gh. Silent u also does not seem to cause problems to
Czech students since in the word guess it was always omitted and in guests it was
pronounced just twice. Silent t was also dropped by the words Christmas and listen in
all instances but we cannot claim that silent t is trouble-free as it was sounded by twenty
respondents in the word fasten. The reason for the correct pronunciation of Christmas
and listen is probably its frequent usage and the same could be applied to could, hours
and science.
Although these words appeared to be easy to pronounce for the participants, the
remaining seventeen words proved to be more problematic (see chart 4).
Chart 4 All mistakes recorded in both groups.
33
First, we should take a closer look at the words in which at least twenty respondents
pronounced the silent letter because these are particularly alarming. There are six such
words to be found, namely fasten, receipt, half, vehicle, bomb and exhausted. The word
exhausted turned out to be most troublesome. Only three participants pronounced it
correctly although everyone knew the word well. Silent h was also sounded in the third
mostly mispronounced word – vehicle. We can therefore conclude that silent h causes
problems in medial positions whereas initially and in the letter combination wh it is
correctly omitted. One of the most surprising outcomes of the research is the high
number of errors by the word half. It ended up fourth from the top with 23 students
pronouncing the l. Silent l generally seems to cause troubles to Czech students because
almost half of the respondents pronounced it in talked and walk as well. This is all the
more peculiar if we consider that these three words represent some of the most frequent
and common words in English. The fifth mostly mispronounced word was receipt. This
was to some extent caused by the ignorance of the word. For six people this word was
completely new and all of them but one finally sounded the p. Silent p was also
pronounced by fourteen students in the word psychological and can be thus labelled as
problematic. Another silent letter that proved troublesome was silent b. Eleven
respondents sounded it in the word climbed and only five people left it out in the word
bomb which made it the second mostly mispronounced word. Moreover, the participants
pronounced the silent letters in sword, muscle, castle and Wednesday but to a lesser
extent. Finally, we ought to comment on the letter sequence wr which occurred in two
tested words, namely wrong and wrists. The word wrists was mispronounced just once
and that was by a student for whom the word was unfamiliar. It is not without interest
that the word was reported as unknown by four other students who pronounced the
word later correctly. It would be nice to conclude that this might have meant that the
correct pronunciation pattern was already adopted by the respondents and they were
able to apply it on new words. Unfortunately, this cannot be claimed for sure as two of
these four respondents pronounced the w also in the word wrong. Nevertheless, if we
compare both groups we can observe an improvement. The students of the fifth year
pronounced the sequence wr incorrectly six times while in the production of their older
colleagues, it decreased to two instances.
34
3.2.3 Discussion
At the beginning of the practical part a hypothesis was put forward that the older
students who achieved a higher level of English would make fewer mistakes than the
younger ones with a lower level of English. This hypothesis was verified by the
conducted research. The students of the fifth year made 125 mistakes whereas the
students of the eighth year erred in 97 cases. Although the older students acquitted
themselves better, the final result cannot be perceived as a success. The Czech speakers
generally mispronounced every fifth target word and this should give us food for
thought. Why do the silent letters cause so much trouble to the Czech speakers of
English? It is highly probable that an important role by this plays the mother tongue
inference. Another reason might be the attitude of many teachers who assume that the
pronunciation skills will be gained on the fly and therefore they do not bother to provide
any explanations or systematic practice. This is also the case of the teacher who works
with the participants of our experiment. However, this research has shown that some
explanations are necessary and that the silent letters ought to be commented on and
trained in the English classes.
35
4. Conclusion
This bachelor thesis focused on the phenomenon of silent letters. The aim of the
theoretical part was to show that the English language is not as unsystematic and
nonsensical as it might appear to many Czech students but that the spelling
inconsistencies are rooted in the language history. I believe that the students should be
provided with some basic knowledge about the development of the English language as
it might help them to understand the relationship between spelling and pronunciation
better. The teachers might explain the silent letters simply by stating that the English
spelling has a tendency to remain fixed while the pronunciation keeps changing over
time. Furthermore, they can mention that a large part of the English word stock was
borrowed from other languages and that the diverse origins of these words brought
about another set of irregularities. These logical explanations will definitely serve as a
better answer than “You just have to learn this” and the students may appreciate them.
The research described in the practical part has revealed that the Czech students
pronounced the silent letter approximately in 21% of the tested words which might be
seen as alarming. Although the hypothesis that linguistically more advanced students
will make fewer mistakes than their less advanced counterparts was verified, the
progress seems rather slow. It is obvious that even the students who have been studying
English for more than eight years still apply their mother tongue spelling strategy to the
English language. From this we can conclude that the students will not acquire the
correct pronunciation of the words containing silent letters by themselves. Further
explanations are necessary and therefore more attention should be paid to silent letters
in the English classrooms. The teachers ought to make the students aware of the
existence of silent letters and offer a satisfactory explanation as to what silent letters are
and what conditioned their origin. Moreover, if we tell the students that silent letters
perform a host of functions in the English language, they might be motivated to learn
the correct pronunciation as they will see that they are important.
This thesis was designed to help students who feel puzzled about the letter to
sound correspondences in English and who would like to find some logic in it.
Hopefully, this thesis will also serve as a source of information for future and current
teachers while preparing their pronunciation lessons.
36
5. Works cited
Brinton, Donna M. “Is English really crazy? Insights into grapheme/phoneme
correspondence.” Speak Out! February 2014: 18-22.
Celce-Murcia, Marianne et al. Teaching pronunciation: a course book and reference
guide. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Collins, Beverly and Inger M. Mees. Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A Resource
Book for Students. London: Routlege, 2003.
Crystal, David. Spell it out: the singular story of English spelling. London: Profile,
2012.
Harris, Michael et al. New Opportunities Intermediate. Harlow: Pearson, 2006.
Harris, Michael et al. New Opportunities Upper Intermediate. Harlow: Pearson, 2006.
Millward, Celia. A Biography of the English Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, Inc., 1989.
Nosek, Jiří. Grafika moderní angličtiny. Praha: Karolinum, 1991.
Pyles, Thomas and John Algeo. The Origins and Development of the English Language.
Third Edition. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1982.
Schmitt, Norbert and Richard Marsden. Why Is English Like That?: Historical Answers
to Hard ELT Questions. The University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Vachek, Josef. Standard English in Historical Perspective. Praha: SPN, 1991.
Volín, Jan. IPA-Based Transcription for Czech Students of English. Praha: Karolinum,
2003.
37
6. Appendices
Appendix 1: List of words with silent letters.
Appendix 2: Mistakes made by the students of the fifth year.
Appendix 3: Mistakes made by the students of the eighth year.
Appendix 4: Mistakes made in both groups.
38
Appendix 1 – List of words with silent letters.
Letters
Position
Examples
b
final mob
comb, thumb, lamb, limb, bomb, climb, tomb,
dumb, crumb, womb, plumb, numb, aplomb,
succumb
c
medial and final bt
subtle, debt, doubt
medial and final ct
indict, victuals, arctic*, adjunct*, Connecticut*
initial and medial sc
scene, science, scent, scythe, scissors, muscle,
ascend, descend, obscene
d
medial sequences
handsome, handkerchief Wednesday, Windsor,
landscape*,
sandwich*,
grandfather*,
blindness*, kindness*, windscreen*, hands-off*
e
final e
adore, hope, hate, entice, site, live, give, gone
g
initial and final gn
gnash, gnarl, gnat, gnaw, gnome, align, foreign,
deign, reign, sign, benign, feign
h
final gm
paradigm, diaphragm, phlegm
initially
heir, honest, honour, hour, herb*
initial wh
what*, which*, where*, when*, whether*,
white*, whim*, whistle*, whale*
rh and kh
rhapsody, rhinoceros, rhotic, rhyme, rhythm,
rheumatism, rhetoric, rhubarb, myrrh, khaki
medial h
k
(1) after ex-
exhaust, exhibit, exhilarate, exhort, exhume
(2) intervocalic
annihilate, vehicle, vehement,
initial kn
knack, knave, knead, kneel, knee, knife, knight,
knit, know
l
ld
only in: should, could, would
al preciding k
balk, chalk, stalk, talk, walk
al preciding f, v, m
calf, half, calves, halves, calm, alms, palm,
balm, almond*, salmon, psalm
39
ol
folk, yolk, Holmes, colonel. In place names:
final folk /fək/, e.g. Norfolk, Suffolk.
m
initial mn
mnemonic
n
final mn
autumn, condemn, column, damn, hymn, solemn
p
initial pn, ps, pt
pneumatic, pneumonia, psychology, psychiatrist,
psychic, pseudo-, psalm, pterodactyl
in a few exceptional coup, corps, cupboard, raspberry, receipt
words
r
s
final r
car*, far*, mother*, ever*, ear*, fur*, pour*
pre-consonantal r
park*, carve*, person*, cord*, farm*, lord*
in a few exceptional aisle, isle, islet, island, viscount
words
in recent loans from chassis,
French
t
chamois,
debris,
précis,
corps,
rendezvous
t after f/s before -en/-le castle, nestle, trestle, bristle, whistle, fasten,
glisten, listen, moisten, hasten, soften, often*
two common words
Christmas, mustn‘t
in recent loans from bouquet, ballet, buffet, cachet, chalet, crochet,
u
French
depot, mortgage, sachet, ragout
gue, gu
guitar, guest, guide, guess, guise, league,
intrigue, plague, tongue, catalogue
w
initial wh
who, whom, whose, whole, whore
initial wr
wrath, wrap, wrench, wretch, wreck, write,
wriggle, wring, wrinkle, wrist, wrong, wry
Exceptional words
answer, sword, two, gunwale, boatswain
place names ending in Greenwich,
Norwich,
-wick/-wich
Warwick
x
foreign words
faux pas, Sioux
z
foreign words
rendezvous
gh
postvocalic gh
through, though,
Ipswich,
caught,
thought,
Berwick,
bought,
taught, weigh, high, daughter, sigh, light, right,
40
might, night, bright, delight, flight, knight,
th
two exceptional words
asthma and isthmus
* Letter is sounded by some speakers but in most cases it concerns just minorities
Compiled from:
Marianne Celce-Murcia, Teaching pronunciation: a course book and reference guide
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) 437-438.
Beverly Collins and Inger M. Mees, Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A Resource
Book for Students (London: Routlege, 2003) 114-116.
Jiří Nosek, Grafika moderní angličtiny (Praha: Karolinum, 1991) 73-74.
41
Subject 1
Subject 2
Subject 3
Subject 4
Subject 5
Subject 6
Subject 7
Subject 8
Subject 9
Subject 10
Subject 11
Subject 12
Subject 13
Subject 14
Subject 15
Total number
Appendix 2 – Mistakes made by the students of the fifth year.
Wednesday
hours
Christmas
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
brought
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
lights
climbed
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
8
fasten
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
1
1
1
10
wrong
bomb
knees
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
1
0
1
1
0
1
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
5
14
0
wrists
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
when
could
walk
muscle
guests
meanwhile
listen
vehicle
half
guess
what
bought
psychological
science
which
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
7
4
1
0
0
13
11
0
0
0
8
0
0
receipt
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
0
13
knife
sword
castle
knights
talked
night
exhausted
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
1
0
10
0
13
Total number
6
9
10
12
13
12
10
9
5
6
5
9
6
8
5 125
fifth
year
42
Subject 1
Subject 2
Subject 3
Subject 4
Subject 5
Subject 6
Subject 7
Subject 8
Subject 9
Subject 10
Subject 11
Subject 12
Subject 13
Subject 14
Subject 15
Total number
Appendix 3 – Mistakes made by the students of the eighth year.
Wednesday
hours
Christmas
brought
lights
climbed
fasten
wrong
bomb
knees
wrists
when
could
walk
muscle
guests
meanwhile
listen
vehicle
half
guess
what
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
3
10
2
11
0
0
0
0
6
1
1
0
0
11
12
0
0
bought
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
psychological
science
which
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
6
0
0
receipt
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
1
0
1
1
1
9
knife
sword
castle
knights
talked
night
exhausted
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
6
1
0
4
0
13
Total number
1
7
3
5
9
5
8
8
5
6
10
6
9
6
9
97
eighth
year
43
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
1
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
F9
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
F4
13
F8
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
5
F3
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
12
F7
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
9
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
10
F6
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
10
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
9
F5
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
12
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
6
F2
0
1
5
F 11
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
6
F 10
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
7
E2
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
3
E3
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
5
E4
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
9
E5
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
5
E6
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
8
E7
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
1
0
1
8
E8
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
5
E9
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
6
E 10
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
10
E 11
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
6
E 12
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
9
E 13
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
6
E 14
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
9
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
5
E1
F 13
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
8
F 15
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1
6
F 14
F 12
T.N.
0
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0 11
1 20
0
7
1 25
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
1 13
0
5
0
2
0
0
0
0
1 24
1 23
0
0
0
0
0
0
1 14
0
0
0
0
1 22
0
0
1 11
0
2
0
0
0 14
0
0
1 26
9 222
F = fifth year
E = eighth year
44
E 15
Appendix 4 – Mistakes made in both groups.
Wednesday
hours
Christmas
brought
lights
climbed
fasten
wrong
bomb
knees
wrists
when
could
walk
muscle
guests
meanwhile
listen
vehicle
half
guess
what
bought
psychological
science
which
receipt
knife
sword
castle
knights
talked
night
exhausted
Total number
F1