960. Some English letters are seen but not heard. In fact, more than half the letters in our alphabet are sometimes silent. We look at the many reasons we have these silent letters that make spelling such a challenge, but that also tell fascinating stories about the history of our language.
960. Some English letters are seen but not heard. In fact, more than half the letters in our alphabet are sometimes silent. We look at the many reasons we have these silent letters that make spelling such a challenge, but that also tell fascinating stories about the history of our language. Plus, we look at the origin of the word "pajamas/pyjamas" and why it has two spellings.
| Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/silent-letters/transcript
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Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history rules, and other cool stuff. But before we jump into this week's podcast, I have not one, but two pronunciation corrections!
First, when I was telling my story about the NATO phonetic alphabet, the segment that keeps on giving, I gave the example of N as "neanderthal," and then learned from a number of kind and amusing listeners that I've been pronouncing that word wrong my whole life. I said "nee-an-DRA-thal," but it is actually pronounced "nee-an-DER-thal," or even "nee-an-DER-tol,' which is the first pronunciation at the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and an alternative pronunciation at Dictionary.com, but sounds very strange to me! I'm going to try to say it Neanderthal from now on.
The origin of the word is kind of interesting too. The name comes from the Neander Valley in Germany, where remains that were later called neanderthals were discovered. But what's cool is that "Neander" means "new man," and neanderthals were essentially a new kind of man — a human species, but different from our own. But that name is just a coincidence. According to Etymonline, the Neander Valley is named after Joachim Neuman, a German pastor who loved visiting this valley in the 1670s. "Neander" is a Greek interpretation of Neuman, apparently because it was common at the time for educated Germans to adopt classical forms of their surnames. Gettin' all fancy with the Greek! But what a coincidence.
Second, my O as in the "orangutang" example also had a pronunciation problem. I pronounce the word "or-ang-uh-tang," but if you look at the spelling, there is no G at the end. Again in this case, Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com disagree about which pronunciation comes first and which is an alternative, but in this case, at least my pronunciation is one of those actually listed. It can be pronounced either the way I say it, "or-ang-uh-tang" or "or-rang-uh-tan."
Next, I have one big meaty middle about why English has so many silent letters.
by Neal Whitman
The English spelling system is famous for not making sense. The phonetic ideal of having each letter represent exactly one sound, and each sound represented by exactly one letter, is impossible when English has about 45 sounds, or phonemes, and only 26 letters to represent them. But more than that, any language that's been written for a long enough time will have spellings that haven’t caught up with modern pronunciations, because pronunciations change.
English has been written for about 1,300 years, which is plenty of time for these mismatches to accumulate. One of the most frustrating signs of these spelling mismatches is English’s abundance of silent letters. With a conservative definition of silent letter, more than half of the letters of our alphabet are silent in at least some words. Today, we’ll find out the stories behind some of these silent letters.
We’re mostly going to talk about silent consonant letters, but we can’t talk about silent letters without acknowledging the most famous silent letter in English: the silent E. Some silent letters appear in just a few words, but silent E appears so regularly that there’s even a spelling rule about it: A silent E at the end of a word makes the preceding vowel long. A long vowel sounds like its name, like the A in the word "name," and a short vowel sounds weaker, like the A in the word "car." (Long, aye. Short, ah.)
According to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, by David Crystal, this rule has its origins in the early part of the Middle English period—in other words, in the 11th century. In those days, English used suffixes much more than it does now to show if a word was singular or plural or if it was being used as the subject or object of a sentence. For example, "hus" [“hoose”], spelled H-U-S, meant just “house,” but "huse" [“HOOSE-uh”], spelled H-U-S-E, meant “to a house.” However, in the Middle English period, that final “uh” sound got dropped completely, so that whether the word was spelled H-U-S or H-U-S-E, it was pronounced “hoose.”
Still, that didn’t stop people from writing that final E. As Crystal writes, “Although the final [uh] sound disappeared, the "-e" spelling remained, and it gradually came to be used to show that the preceding vowel was long. This is the origin of the modern spelling ‘rule’ about ‘silent e’ in such words as "name" and "rose."
Many silent consonant letters represent consonants that were actually pronounced at one time, but fell victim to changing phonotactic rules.
What’s a phonotactic rule? It’s a rule that describes the way sounds can be arranged in the words of a language. For example, one phonotactic rule of present-day English is that you don’t have a long U sound before the "ng" sound. So although "ring," "rang," and "rung" are all good English words, "roong" is not only not an English word; it’s not even a possible English word.
One phonotactic rule that changed has to do with where you can have an H sound. Say the word "hug." It begins with the H sound, right? Now say the word "huge." What sound does it begin with? H again? Well, yes and no. It’s true that we hear it as an H, but it’s not the same kind of H that we have in "hug." That H is made by just letting air flow past your vocal cords, down in your neck. The H in "huge," though, is made by raising the body of your tongue up close to your palate, and forcing air through that constriction.
In present-day English, we only pronounce H at the beginnings of words, but in Old English, the H pronounced with your tongue close to your palate could also appear in the middle of a word or at the end. It was spelled as an H in Old English, and as a GH in Middle English, and even after English speakers stopped pronouncing those palatal H’s, the spelling remained. We know it today as the silent GH in words such as "thought," "(k)night," and "through."
Phonotactic rules also deal with consonant clusters, and in English, these rules are pretty picky. With 23 consonant sounds, more than 500 consonant clusters are possible, but English uses only about 40, and some of those appear only in proper nouns, such as "Gwen," or in borrowed words like "schlep" and "sriracha." But in the past, English used to have quite a few more consonant clusters than it does now. One cluster that has disappeared is KN, which gives us the silent K in words such as "knife," "knee," and "knowledge." "Knife," for example, used to be pronounced “ka-NEEF.” Another long-lost cluster is WR, which has given way to the silent W in words such as "wrong," "wreath," and "wrestle." Yet another consonant cluster that English doesn’t have anymore is GN, which is the source of the silent G in words such as "gnaw," "gnat," and "gnarly."
The word "gnome" also comes to mind when you think of silent G, but that’s not from Old English. It’s from Greek, which brings us to another source of silent letters. Classical Greek allowed several other consonant clusters that violate modern English phonotactic rules. As a result, Greek borrowings that begin with these clusters get simplified by losing that first consonant. In addition to the GN cluster of "gnome" and "gnostic," Greek had several clusters beginning with P. The cluster PN appears in "pneumonia," and PS in words such as "psalm" and "psychiatry." The cluster PT shows up in the root "pter-," which means “wing,” in words such as "pterodactyl."
This word root "pter-" brings us to the phenomenon of silent letters that are magically revealed in the right phonetic situations. Notice that we pronounce that P with no problem at all when it has a vowel before it, in words such as "helicopter" and "Lepidoptera," the scientific name for the order of butterflies. What’s happened is that the PT cluster has been split apart. The P ends up at the end of a syllable—"cop" or "dop," to be specific—and the T ends up at the beginning of the syllable "ter." The same thing happens with the Greek root "mnem-," meaning “mind.” The M is silent in "mnemonic," but in the word "amnesia," it gets pronounced as the end of the syllable "am."
All the clusters we’ve talked about so far come at the beginning of a word, but there are also phonotactic rules about clusters coming at the end of a word. The word "hymn," as in a hymn that you sing in church, has a silent N at the end of it, but like the disappearing-reappearing P and M, it gets revealed in the right phonetic environment—in this case, when it’s followed by a vowel in the word "hymnal."
Latin provides a few of these now-you-hear-them-now-you-don’t N’s, too, in words such as "condemn" and "condemnation." In the original Latin and Greek, these words had suffixes following those consonant clusters, but those suffixes got deleted when these words entered English, leaving a phonotactically unacceptable cluster at the ends of the words, thus giving us the silent N at the end.
Some letters are silent in English words because we borrowed the words from another language, and they’re silent in that language, too. I’m looking at you, French. How many of you, like me, went for years hearing the word "rendezvous" spoken, and not realizing it was the same word as "ren-DEZZ-vuss" that you’d read in books? The "rendez" and the "vous" have a silent Z and silent S, respectively, because that’s how they’re pronounced in French. The same goes for the silent P and silent T in "coup d'état," and the silent D and silent X in "Grand Prix."
Why does French have so many silent final consonant letters? Just as in English, the spellings have been fixed for a long time, and have not changed with the language’s pronunciation. As for why French speakers stopped pronouncing those final consonants in so many words, that’s a question for the historical linguists. In case you’re curious, though, the name for the deletion of sounds from the end of a word is "apocope."
By the way, watch out when you’re pronouncing French words, because not all of its final consonant letters are silent. Furthermore, if a French word ends with a consonant followed by an E, you do pronounce that consonant. So a complete meal at a restaurant that is served at a fixed price is a “pree feex” meal, because "prix" is spelled P-R-I-X, while "fixe" is spelled F-I-X-E. It’s not a “pree fee” meal, as I’ve heard some servers call it. And the finishing touch on a job is the "coup de grace" (“koo d’grahs”), because "grace" is spelled G-R-A-C-E. It’s not a "coup de gras" (“koo d’grah”), which literally means a “strike of fat.”
The last group of silent letters we’ll talk about came from some misguided spelling reforms. We’ve been talking about how silent letters can result from not removing a letter that represents a sound that isn’t pronounced. However, in some cases, a silent letter has come from putting in a letter for a sound that isn’t pronounced!
Why would anyone do such a thing? As is often the case, someone had good intentions. In his book "The Fight for English," David Crystal explains that during the Renaissance, some spelling reformers thought it would be a good idea to insert letters to make a word’s origin clear. This is where the silent B in "debt" came from. At the time, the word was spelled without a B, but reformers began to insert it, to show its relation to the Latin source "debitum." Crystal writes that this tinkering also resulted in the silent S in "island," because the reformers were sure that this word came from the Latin word for island, "insula." The joke was on them, though, because it didn’t!
Crystal concludes, “There are many more such cases. Some people nowadays find it hard to understand why there are so many ‘silent letters’ of this kind in English. It is because other people thought they were helping.”
There are many other silent letters with stories that didn’t make it into today’s episode. The main thing to take away is that usually, there is a good historical reason for a silent letter. Spelling reforms have often been proposed, and sometimes they’ve even been executed; for an example, you can read about Noah Webster in "The Grammar Daily" or hear the story of the two spellings of "color" in episode 671. Even if we reformed spelling again now, we wouldn’t solve the problem. In another 100 years, English pronunciations will have changed again.
That segment was written by Neal Whitman, an independent writer and consultant specializing in language and grammar and a member of the Reynoldsburg, Ohio, school board. You can search for him by name on Facebook, or find him on his blog at literalminded.wordpress.com.
Finally, I have a familect story:
"Hi, I have a familect. My name is Fred Kerr calling from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Longtime listener, first-time caller, and my familect has to do with the pandemic. As you know, as everybody knows, during the pandemic, everybody was stuck at home working in front of the computer, so you didn't have to put on real work clothes, but you couldn't really stay all day in your pajamas and be in front of your computer in whatever it is that you sleep in. So my husband and I started kind of dressing a little bit better from the waist up for the sake of Zoom calls. So they weren't pajamas, but they weren't real clothes. They were pajamas you wore during the day. So we ended up calling them 'dayjamas.' And even though we're out of lockdown, we still call them our 'dayjamas.' Not pajamas, not your outside clothes, but your 'dayjamas.' And even some friends have picked up on that as well.
But on the subject of pajamas, that did lead me to two questions. Number one, it's kind of an unusual word. What's the etymology of the word 'pajamas'? And I'm hoping you can settle something else. My other question, I have seen 'pajamas' spelled with a P-A as well as a P-Y. So I want to know, What is the correct spelling of the word 'pajamas'? Anyway, thank you once again. Love your show. Thanks a bunch. Bye-bye."
Thanks for the great call, Fred. As someone who has worked from home for around 20 years, I love to lounge around in dayjamas.
"Pajamas" is an interesting word too. The Oxford English Dictionary says it is "Partly a borrowing from Urdu. Partly a borrowing from Persian." In the regions where those languages are spoken, people just wore loose pants tied at the waist. Europeans who lived there around the year 1800 adopted the style, and it seems especially for nightwear, according to Etymonline. The word has two parts, "pāy," or "pā" (for leg) and "jāma" (for clothing) and the first time it appeared in English, it was written as two words: "pai jamahs."
As for the second part of your question, it was spelled a bunch of different ways between 1800 and about 1885, at which point it seemed to settle into the P-Y-J spelling in British English and the P-A-J spelling in American English. I couldn't find any explanation of why it ended up different in different countries. I suspected it could be Noah Webster's doing, but Etymonline puts the American spelling at 1845 and an 1872 edition of Webster's dictionary didn't have the word at all with either spelling. All I can really say is that it's just one of the odd little differences. So when you ask which spelling is correct, the answer depends on where you live. It's P-A-J-A-M-A-S in American English, and P-Y-J-A-M-A-S in British English.
And no matter how you spell it, I hope many of you are able to enjoy lounging around in your pajamas — or dayjamas — a bit more than normal this week.
If you want to share the story of your familect, your family dialect, a word your family and only your family uses, call the voicemail line at 83-321-4-GIRL. It’s in the show notes, and be sure to tell me the story behind your familect because that’s always the best part.
Also, it's not too late to start the year with THE GRAMMAR DAILY. The book is like a tip-a-day calendar you get to keep. It has 365 pages with tips, cartoons, puzzles, and quizzes to entertain you for the whole year. The weeks are numbered 1, 2, 3 and so on, so you can start anytime, but I do like to start things like this the first week of the year. It just feels more orderly. That's THE GRAMMAR DAILY.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to marketing associate, Davina Tomlin; ad operations specialist, Morgan Christianson; director of podcasts, Brannan Goetschius; marketing assistant, Kamryn Lacey; digital operations specialist, Holly Hutchings; and audio engineer, Nathan Semes, who says he finally got approval from immigration to bring his fiancee to the states! They don't have an official date yet, but it's happening soon, and I just could not be happier for them. That's such great news!
And I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. That's all. Thanks for listening.