Master English Silent Letters: 79 Words Sorted by Rule, from Knife to Yacht
Learn English silent letters by rule: kn-, wr-, -mb, -mn, silent L, GH and Greek ps-/pn-. 79 flashcards with cognate tricks and the cards to fix.
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Why is there a k in knife, a b in doubt and a gh in night? English spelling froze centuries ago while its pronunciation kept moving, and scholars later added letters to make words look like their Latin or Greek ancestors. The result: silent letters that trip up learners and native speakers alike. The Flip It deck English Pronunciation: Silent Letters (TK8632) has 79 cards that train you to spot them, and almost all of them follow a handful of patterns.
Study this deck: English Pronunciation: Silent Letters
1 / 10knife
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
What the cards look like
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| knight | K (silent K at the beginning), GH is also silent |
| debt | B (inserted to match Latin cognates like debit) |
| psychology | P (Greek initial cluster PS, P is silent) |
| island | S (spuriously inserted to match isle, but Germanic origin) |
| Which letters are silent in daughter? | GH (was pronounced [x] in Middle English) |
| hymn | N (silent N after M, compare hymnal) |
| castle | T (cluster simplified: -STL- becomes -SL-) |
| gourmet | T (from French, final T is silent) |
| yolk | L (silent L before K) |
| Which letters are silent in yacht? | CH (from Dutch, silent in English) |
The patterns you'll cover
- Initial clusters: kn- (knee, knock, know), wr- (write, wrong, wrap, wrist), gn- (gnat, gnaw, gnome), Greek ps-/pn-/pt-/mn- (pneumonia, pterodactyl, mnemonic, ptarmigan).
- Final clusters: -mb (climb, lamb, thumb, comb), -mn (autumn, column, solemn, damn), -gm (phlegm, diaphragm, paradigm), -gn (sign, design, foreign).
- Silent L: before K (talk, walk, chalk, folk), before M (calm, palm, salmon), before D (would, should, could).
- Silent T: -stle/-sten (whistle, listen, fasten), plus Christmas and mortgage.
- Silent H: honor, honest, hour, heir, vehicle, Sarah, chthonic.
- Old sounds and loanwords: GH in light, right, through; French endings in ballet, depot, debris; Dutch yacht; compounds like cupboard and breakfast; the magic E (rate vs rat, fine vs fin).
Two tips that make this stick
Study by rule, not by word. The deck is grouped by letter, so turn each group into a rule card: K before N at the start of a word is silent, B after M at the end is silent, L before K is silent. Then flip the word cards and ask yourself which rule applies. Five rules cover about half the deck.
Use the cognate where the letter comes back. Many cards already hint at it: sign → signature, hymn → hymnal, damn → damnation, phlegm → phlegmatic. Add autumn → autumnal, column → columnist, bomb → bombard, paradigm → paradigmatic. If you can say the longer word, you'll never forget how to spell the shorter one.
A few cards to fix
- Card 64 (chthonic): the back says the first H, but in /ˈθɒnɪk/ it is the C that drops out (CHTH sounds like TH). Rewrite it.
- Card 79 (magic E): its hint reads A. It should be E.
- Accent notes: many Americans do pronounce the L in palm and calm, and some say the T in often. Treat those as variants, not mistakes.
- What's missing: silent U (guitar, guess, biscuit), silent C (scissors, muscle), silent D (Wednesday, handsome). Add 6 cards and the set covers every major pattern.
Start practicing
Open Flip It and search for deck code TK8632. Once your spelling is clean, move on to tricky pairs with our guide to English confusing words.
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