Know’ is interesting, because even though the ‘k’ is silent (we don’t say ‘cah-noh’), it is not pronounced the same way as ‘now’. However, when the letter ‘k’ precedes the letter ‘n’ at the start of a word, it falls silent such as ‘know’. The ‘k’ in English is traditionally a hard-sounding vowel ‘cah’ or ‘kah’, especially when it’s at the end of a word: back, for instance. Here we take a look at some common words with silent letters, and how to pronounce them. Not only has it absorbed plenty of vocabulary from invaders, like French, Latin and Norse, but the eventual standardization of sounds in the English language has meant that certain words, whilst keeping their older forms of spelling, have had their sounds refined and softened. Lots of these strange ‘silent’ letters are due to the history of the English language. The result is a series of words which are written in a way which seems very different from their sound. Unlike a language like Spanish, in English we rarely sound out all the letters that we see. Silent letters in English - The English language is full of words whose written form can be deceptive.
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