Many people find English vocabulary confusing, and for a variety of reasons. Some find that the quirks in pronunciation make it difficult to use new words in conversation, especially when going between British English and American English. For example, a British army lieutenant (LEFF-ten-ent) might use his mobile (MOH-BILE) to call the garage (GAIR-ridge) when his car breaks down, but a lieutenant (loo-TEN-ent) in the US Army would reach for his mobile (MOH-bull) phone to call the corner garage (guh-RAHJ) in the same situation. And frankly, there’s no clue in the word lieutenant or the word garage as to why they’re pronounced the way they are in either version. Students of the English language have to pick up these subtleties as they learn.

Silent letters – such as the “e” at the end of garage – are letters that are not pronounced when saying the word out loud, although they may affect the pronunciation of the word. In this example, if the word were spelled garag it would most likely be pronounced just as it’s spelled, GAH-RAG. If you know the ways a final “e” can change the pronunciation, you’ll get a clue about the spelling of the word (see this post for more information). Silent letters can be either vowels or consonants (some other examples are here).

Sometimes knowing two forms of a word will help you learn how to spell both correctly. There is a silent “n” at the end of the verb condemn (kun-DEHM), but that same “n” is pronounced in the noun condemnation (kahn-dehm-NAY-shun). The same pattern occurs with the noun autumn (AW-tuhm) and its adjective autumnal (aw-TUHM-nahl). Here at the Vocabulary Builder’s Blog, we frequently encourage you to explore the relationships between words, and this is an excellent example of how a little research can not only add still more words to your vocabulary, but also help you learn how to spell and pronounce them correctly.

Cross-posted at the Ultimate Spelling blog.