Silent letter

Letter that is not pronounced In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign U+2205 ∅ EMPTY SET, which resembles the Scandinavian letter Ø. A null or zero is an unpronounced or unwritten segment. English One of the noted difficulties of English spelling is a high number of silent letters. Edward Carney distinguishes different kinds of "silent" letters, which present differing degrees of difficulty to readers. Auxiliary letters which, with another letter, constitute digraphs; i.e., two letters combined which represent a single phoneme. These may further be categorized as: "Exocentric" digraphs, where the sound of the digraph is different from that of either of its constituent letters. These are rarely considered "silent". Examples: Where the phoneme has no standard single-letter representation, as with consonants ⟨ng⟩ for /ŋ/ as in sing, ⟨th⟩ for /θ/ as in thin or /ð/ as in then, or diphthongs ⟨ou⟩ in out or ⟨oi⟩ in point. These are the default spellings for the relevant sounds and present n