Muted Letters In English
.png)
The words like “psychologist”, “knight” or “knees” have the first letter written but are muted. When it comes to saying them out loud if you want to know why this article will reveal the secrets of a such linguistic phenomenon.
The rules of the English language can be explained easily if we know the right terms for them. For instance, there is a word called “phonotactics”. It describes one of the rules of how to put sounds in one English word. If a word begins with a consonant sound like “p”, “b”, “t”, “d”, “g” or “k”, the only sounds that are allowed between that and the next vowel are “r”, “l”, and “w”. It explains why we may have the words like “glue”, “priority” or “cluster”. However, there is not a single English word that starts with “gn” or “dn”.
If that sounds complicated enough, what to say about the following sounds and syllables: m, n, ng. According to the rules, such “nasal” sounds can only go after the letter “s”: snow, small, smile. “Ng” would never appear anywhere but at the very end of a word: beginning, smoking, etc.
Going back to the words mentioned at the beginning, they were adopted from the Latin and French languages. Therefore, the writing has never changed. However, the way English speakers pronounce them had to be edited according to phonotactics.
Not only does the English language have a such way to adjust the pronunciation of the imported words according to their own phonic structure. For instance, Chinese speakers tend to substitute the sound “r” with “l”. For Spanish people, it is common to add the sound “e” to every word starting with the letter “s”.
The language rules can’t be the same, but this feature makes them so diverse and attractive.
Follow this link to find out which English words are associated with Christmas in the English-speaking world.
Оставить комментарий
Для комментирования необходимо войти через
Вконтакте