A2 · B1

Silent letters in English words

When you have a phonetic language like Spanish, for instance, it is quite easy to say the words you have learned from a book or  a dictionary because if you know the sound of each letter, you can do quite well when speaking the language and everybody will understand you. But this is not the case with English; which for a lot of people seems like a `crazy´language with its own rules. I already mentioned this feature of English in a post on phonetics and here I’m going to mention another feature that will also look pretty strange to many language learners. That is, letters that appear in the written form of language, but should not be pronounced. These letters are called ‘silent letters’ because we do not pronounce them. About two years ago I created a slide lesson, but now that I (unfortunately), have a lot more time, I have also made a video where you can see and hear the examples of some of the most typical silent letters.

Here’s the video and an activity!

Serena’s blog
Created by blogdeserena

English silent letters 1

In English there are quite a few letters that are silent in some contexts. Do this quiz to check on your knowledge of these letters.

If you don't score well, maybe you need to watch the video I placed on this page.

Good luck! 🙂

1 / 10

1.Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent b?

2 / 10

2. Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent b?

3 / 10

3. Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent b?

4 / 10

4. Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent d?

5 / 10

5.Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent d?

6 / 10

6.Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent s?

7 / 10

7.Which of these words has a silent l?

8 / 10

8. Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent l?

9 / 10

9.Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent k?

10 / 10

10. Which of these words DOES NOT HAVE a silent h?

2 thoughts on “Silent letters in English words

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.