One of the most difficult aspects of English to master is the link – or lack of one – between the way words are spelled and the way they are pronounced. This is a particular problem for people whose first language has fewer ways to pronounce vowels and consonants and combinations of the two. “Silent” letters are ones that appear in the spelling of a word, but not in its pronunciation. Here are some examples of words with silent letters:

muscle
This word has both a silent c and a silent e, and is pronounced MUSS-uhl. However, the related adjective muscular is pronounced MUSS-kyu-luhr, including the hard-c “k” sound when the word is spoken out loud. If you remember both of these words, you’ll remember to spell muscle with a c.

foreign
This is pronounced FOR-ehn, leaving out both the sound of the i and the sound of the g. This pronunciation does not change in the related noun foreigner (FOR-ehn-uhr). This is a particularly difficult word, because you need to remember both of the silent letters and that the e comes before the i for no apparent reason and in contradiction to the often-cited rule “I before E except after C.” Foreign is just one of those words you’ll have to practice until its spelling no longer seems so foreign to you.

through
With three silent letters, the word through (pronounced THROO) can definitely cause you some problems. The o, g, and h are silent in this word; the “oo” sound comes from the u. To make things even more confusing, the word though, which is different only in the lack of an r, is pronounced THO (rhyming with “no” and “show”) rather than THOO as you might expect after looking at through.

knife
The silent k at the beginning of this word, pronounced NIF (with the “i” vowel rhyming with the word “eye”) is a hard one for children to remember, because it makes little sense. However, back when people were speaking Old English, the “k” sound was likely pronounced, perhaps by the famous K-nights of the Round Table.

listen
Listen is pronounced LISS-ehn, with a silent t. A similar word, often, can be pronounced with or without the “t” sound, depending on dialect of English the speaker grew up with.

island
The silent s in island (EYE-lund) is easy to forget. Practice writing the word and saying it out loud, or create a mnemonic trick to remember the s, such as the phrase “Islands Sit in Seven Salty Seas.”

Cross-posted at the Ultimate Spelling blog.