What is the point of silent letters?

[Muhyoui]

No seriously

What do they do?
Sit there and look pretty?

It makes learning languages so much harder
Like English
"Raspberry"
It should be "Rasberry" or even better, "Razzberry"

And when an English person is learning something like Korean (me right now)
HOW THE HELL DO YOU TELL WHEN A SILENT LETTER IS BEING USED AND WHAT THAT LETTER IS?!

I'm literally guessing here

I get the romanized of "om"
four letters, okay so ㅇ, ㅗ, ㅁ....ㄹ? Or maybe it's ㅇ, ㅗ, ㄹ, ㅁ?
Let's try the first way
Nope, it's the other way around.

I feel sorry for anyone learning a language with silent letters, like English

[MinionJoe]

What's the point of tonsils or an appendix?

It's just what's left over after generations of evolution.

[Q-T_3.14.exe]

What is the point of French if it's just mostly that? 🤔

[Swarmfly]

The IPA has entered the chat.

[76561199094198998]

They're guides for mouth position while pronouncing the word.

Razz makes you slide the word out of the corner of your mouth, rasp encloses your lips around it like a berry with a smile.

Formal and informal dialects may have different spelling in English, but because it's derived from a very top-down hierarchical culture the "proper" spelling always reflects a certain form of pronunciation and world view.

[Unexpected]

why is bicester pronounced bistuh, or worcestershire pronounced as wostuh? language is a funny human thing and not all the words and letters have to make sense, just enjoy it for what it is

[swillfly]

Language rules are typically derived from peeple & their usage.

If peeple were smarter & less lazy linguistically, we'd have better language rules.

[Muhyoui]

Publicado originalmente por Unexpected:

why is bicester pronounced bistuh, or worcestershire pronounced as wostuh? language is a funny human thing and not all the words and letters have to make sense, just enjoy it for what it is

Kind of hard to enjoy it when I am struggling to figure out a pattern with these silent letters

How doth one tell when a silent letter is being used
And how doth one tell what said letter is

[Muhyoui]

Publicado originalmente por Eréndira:

Spite.

seems like it

[Tonepoet]

Sometimes silent letters serve as pronunciation guides that indicate how other letters are suppose. It's the difference between being crazy or angry with the word mad, and being constructive or creative with the word made. Sometimes it differentiates homophones from each-other: Made vs. Maid for example, or heel vs heal. Often times words are spelt a certain way because they bear some etymological relation to other words, and the spelling groups them together as cognate, though I forget the examples of this, because etymology usually is not a consideration when speaking or writing.

Also, it should be noted that words can have many pronunciations based upon dialectical considerations but the conventions of orthography dictate that there should be only one spelling. Also dictionaries often won't tell you how a word is meant to be pronounced, but rather report on the most commonly used pronunciations in practice. There is noting wrong with saying raspberry with a vocalized p, and it may even be preferable. It is just a little harder so most people end up eliding it.

The Farlex Book of Grammar Volume III: English Spelling and Pronunciation has a section on silent letters[www.thefreedictionary.com], you might find insightful:

Publicado originalmente por The Farlex Book of Grammar:

Aside from words derived from Greek roots, silent P occurs in a handful of other words:

• cupboard (/ˈkʌbərd/)
  
• raspberry (/ˈræzˌbɛri/)
  
• corps (/kɔr/; both P and S are silent, unless the word is plural, in which case S is pronounced /z/)
  
• coup (/ku/)
  
• receipt (/rɪˈsit/)

In the first two terms, P is made silent through a process called elision—the /p/ sound was initially present (as they were originally compound words of cup + board and raspis + berry), but because it is difficult to individually pronounce /p/ and /b/ next to each other in the same word, /p/ has been naturally omitted.

In other words, they slur out the p sound in this case because they are being somewhat lazy and inattentive. It's the same reason contractions exist.

[Vince ✟]

This reminds me of Kings Speech
https://youtu.be/7WJts0gKCRM

[Grendalcat]

To make spelling harder.

[Muhyoui]

Publicado originalmente por 梅 ⇄ Ume:

Yea.. spelling being different from pronunciation is annoying.

For these languages, you have to make sure you listen to the language every day so you can subconsciously know what does not get pronounced.

It is disillusioning to see 닭 & 읽 pronounced 닥 & 익

Maybe you know 음료 is pronounced 음뇨. I guess it's because ㅁㄹ is harder to pronounce?

Well, I think the Korean silent letters are more logical than that of English.

When I was first starting out, I didn't know about the silent letters (for some reason) so whenever I saw 닭 being pronounced as 닥 I was confused. It wasn't until recently that I learned about it and then it clicked.

I'm hoping that the longer I study and learn Korean, the easier it'll be to recognize which letter is silent, and being able to spell a syllable (or word) with a silent letter.

But that probably won't be for a another year. Better get cracking I guess.

[Shodan]

Why the hell do I sometimes hear "idea" like "idear" from UK speakers?

[Muhyoui]

Publicado originalmente por Shodan:

Why the hell do I sometimes hear "idea" like "idear" from UK speakers?

That would be the accent speaking

Like an aussie saying watah instead of water
Or touah instead of tour

[Shodan]

Publicado originalmente por Aquatic Hydra:

Publicado originalmente por Shodan:

Why the hell do I sometimes hear "idea" like "idear" from UK speakers?

That would be the accent speaking

Like an aussie saying watah instead of water
Or touah instead of tour

Yeah, that's in UK too, but this is the only case of adding a letter that I can think of.