Talk:Silent letter

Danish section is very underdeveloped
The Danish section of this article needs additions by someone with a more academic understanding of the Danish language. It lists "h" as in hvad and "d" following a consonant as in mand (or holde) as the only silent letters, but ignores at least these cases:


 * "d" as followed by an "s", as in halvfjerds or plads


 * "f" as in af or afsted,


 * "v" as in blive or give or sølv


 * "g" as in tage or hurtig or sige


 * "t" as in det

Some digraphs (as the English section has listed):


 * "dt" as in lidt or skidt


 * "ch" as in Christian such as Kong Christian X (but not chance)


 * non-geminated double letters like "mm" in gammel or "ll" in Jylland or "dd" in rydde


 * "sj" or "ch", similar to non-silent digraphs listed in the English section, as in sjov or chance

And some that are often silent:


 * "e" as in ikke


 * "l" as in til or skal, and "lle" as in skulle


 * "n" in kan and "nne" as in kunne


 * "d" as in hvad and "de" as in lide


 * "å" as in også (along with the already-silent "g")

And beyond these, there are probably more that I forgot or am unaware of. Unfortunately I don't have a good enough understanding of Danish to make these changes on the main page. However, it does seem misleading that the main page now says that there are only two silent letters in Danish.

24.23.65.53 (talk) 01:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 December 2018
Need to change the word "Malayalam is a Sanskritised language" to "Malayalam is a Dravidian language" 203.99.198.76 (talk) 07:38, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:36, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

article listing words with silent letters nominated for deletion
There is an article containing a list of words with silent letters for each letter A-Z. It is nominated as an Article for Deletion, so I completely rewrote it to include some of the history of why there are so many silent letters in English words. It is called Silent English alphabet. You are invited to contribute to the discussion regarding the proposed deletion. I am writing this in case you would like to see some of the content of that article preserved. You would be informed judges of whether one or more parts of the article add value to your topic area. Overjive (talk) 08:27, 21 December 2018 (UTC)


 * For the record, this is considered canvassing. Notices to projects and article talk pages must be written in a neutral manner. The article was deleted anyway. - BilCat (talk) 21:32, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

"Sarah" empty letters
Empty letters are defined in this article as letters which have never had a pronunciation, such as the w in answer, as opposed to inert letters like the a in practically. The h in Sarah is used as an example to demonstrate.

There's one problem, though. The h in Sarah did have a pronunciation in the original Hebrew, didn't it? (Sarah is a biblical name.) Either it was a heth or a he. IPA editor (talk) 16:29, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Tibetan
I understand that Tibetan has a lot of silent letters. It would be nice if someone who knew something about this would contribute to this article. --Macrakis (talk) 14:24, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Describing voiced and unvoiced consonants
Please avoid to use the descriptors 'soft' and 'hard'. They are misleading. [b], [d], [g], [z] are voiced not soft, and [p], [t], [k], [s] are unvoiced. Similarly to the sibilants ch, sh and th which have voiced and unvoiced contrasts. These descriptors delineate exactly the production of these consonants. Some will, misunderstand 'soft' and 'hard' as how much air they pust out, soft blowing or hard blowing. The voicedness is largely a result of coarticulation of preceding and following phonemes. Their voicedness induces them to be also voiced or not, unless a devoicing occurs at end of the word or sentence/utterance. Deaf people upon reading the 'soft/hard' description understand that way. The same inane vocabulary also extends to describe a language or dialect as soft and hard. How does it help deaf people to view that them psychologically as hearing people do?

Also incorrect is to describe unstressed schwa after /i/ as realized in some words with -ie- in German. It is a schwa not an /e/. The schwa will realizes to /e/ if stressed. In languages with a lot of consonant clustering like Polish, there is always a brief schwa between certain consonants to help the transition from a consonant the the next. The Polish orthography decides to not mention the vowel transitions. 74.104.149.73 (talk) 04:24, 12 May 2021 (UTC) Hartmut Teuber, 11 May 2021

Italian 'i'
Of the 'i' used to soften 'c/g' in Italian:
 * When $⟨i⟩$ in that position is not silent, it must be marked with a trema: $⟨ì⟩$.

My Italian is limited but still I'll say I have never seen that; also, that's not a trema (ï), that's a grave accent. Clarify? —Tamfang (talk) 18:52, 15 May 2023 (UTC)