Silent Letters: Why English is a Hard Language to Learn

Silent letters are sprinkled into countless words in the English language. However, did you know there are many languages that do not have silent letters at all? Even more common, many languages have only a few silent letters. These facts can make learning to read English challenging.

The Nardagani Reading Program’s approach to teaching silent letters helps to make English easier to learn. How? Nardagani teaches our students that silent letters do not need another letter to say its name, each letter stands alone. For example, in the word cake, there are three sounds C A K. If you pronounce the E, the word is “cakey.” It is the same with bike. If you pronounce the E, the word is “bikey.”

Silent letters confuses challenged and ESL readers constantly.  Nardagani underlines the silent letters so readers can easily see them, and get to know them.

Below is a list of all the letters in English that can be silent. If you are challenged by this concept, pronounce the letter that is underlined and hear how the word sounds.

Letters that can be silent (17) and examples:

A: leaf, throat, read

B: subtle, thumb, doubt

C: scissors, irascible

D: friends, sounds, budget, adjust

E: nine, wave, great

G: light, sign, paradigm

H: light, when, chaos, why

I: nail, eight

K: know, knew, knee

L: yolk, would, calm

N: column, damn, solemn

O: people, work

S: island, isle

T: kitchen, listen restlessness, castle

U: build, tongue, turtle

W: write, who, sword

Y: monkey, eye

Click here to learn more about the Nardagani Reading Program and watch Narda’s TEDx talk, “A New Way to Learn to Read English.”