LISTEN TO THE SILENT

English is basically a simple language - one can go wrong in  only a few places - either pronunciation  or punctuation or spelling. Mark Twain, the celebrated American writer said that ' a gifted person ought to learn English ( barring spelling and pronouncing ) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years.'

In a previous blog, under a Bernard Shawesque header GHOTI, dated 9/6/14, I had dwelt upon the oddities of English pronunciation - and desperate folks can check up in the archives at www. viveksahay.com. I have not touched in detail the problems of punctuation in English except as  a passing reference in my blog 'The Long and Short of It' dated 05/01/2014, but suffice to say, a  punctuation  error can turn a sentence on its head: Woman, without her man, is nothing' and 'Woman! Without her man , man is nothing.' or even cost a life as in " Let's eat Grandma instead of "Let's eat, Grandma." 

It was probably in a tone of utter repulsion and helplessness which one normally associates with the effect of a taxman's knock on an indigent's door that had made the Nobel Laureate   Gabriel Garcia Marquez exclaim," Spelling should be pensioned off, it terrorizes human beings from birth." One of the main reasons, of course, is due to the  quirkiness of the  pronunciation of  English language.

But a major contributory factor is the googly in the form of the silent letters which  slalom, snake and sneak their way into almost every sentence, triggering  teasing taunts  and sometimes sniggers  from snobbish  stiff upper lips when someone spells or speaks the word incorrectly. Inability to spell diarrhoea correctly in front of a teeth gnashing teacher could even induce symptoms the medical condition which answers to that word.  Interestingly, out of 26 English alphabets,  all have been used as silent one time or the other- from a in bread to d in Wednesday to i in maize and on to v in revving,  w in whooping cough  and upto to z in rendezvous.

For most Indians, exposed to languages in which the basic written symbols or graphemes are quite consistent with the basic sounds or phonemes ( like r in ring or a in ago), the main function of the written word  or orthography was to reduce in print how and what  we speak . But the English  had other designs for their orthography - it was to tell about the history of the word, its origin and evolution. In the process, if it helped  pronunciation  it was  incidental , if it did not, well, it was collateral damage. One can go a step forward and say that it was more of a canvas to paint the many facets of their personality and to depict their history. 

One may be at  one's wit's end to fathom why accommodate has an extra c and m and misspell an extra s  and l, why a single letter f represents gh or ph,  guess what   n and m  are doing in damn and phlegm respectively, and wonder how does w assist us to pronounce answer, s  island, h Sarah, and t ballet. These silent letters do  look like fiendish traps  set all over to confound pronunciation. 

But having said that  it must not be forgotten that silent letters bear silent testimony to the British trait of being an extremely caring people.  They  help to distinguish between homophones, e.gin/inn; be/bee/ lent;leant;wright/right/write/rite. They give an insight into the meaning or origin of the word (vineyard and not vinyard), provide useful information about pronunciation of other letters - the letter e in cottage and bane tells how g and a will be uttered respectively.  They assist in improved diction by  putting a weight on a certain syllable - the final [fe] in giraffe signals the second syllable stress whereas only giraf could suggest the initial stress on r.

The English have been very particular  to indicate the etymological roots of the words borrowed- especially from Latin and Greek. A problem in this was that the phonotactics of English language did not allow borrowing without some modification. Okay, you are stuck up with what is phonotactics. Well, phonotactics (from Ancient Greek phōnḗ "voice, sound" and taktikós "having to do with arranging")^[1] is a branch of phonology which defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters, and vowel sequences by means of phonotactical constraints. It is the phonotactical contour of some languages that allow words like fwost and zpink and abtholve but  not in English. 

So when borrowing in their English words which belonged to a different phonotactical lineage, the English did a deft tweak by resorting to the use of silent letters to make their pronunciation possible. Silent letters simplify clusters of consonants, largely due to in situ adoption of loanwords, like the silent th in asthma, t in Christmas, p in psychology, m in mnemonic, and ph in phthalate - which is as soothing as a glass of chilled water after you have bit into a  pungent Bhut Jolokia. 

Silent letters also complete the minimum letter requirement of three alphabets of content words ( the nouns, most verbs, adjectives, and adverb that  refer to some object , action, or characteristic) , especially the ones containing fewer than three phonemes by adding phonetically redundant letters , such as ebb/add/inn/be/buy,owe,etc.

Of course the English  overdid the silent letter stuff later in their passion for the classical languages Latin and Greek during 16/17th century English Renaissance  period . They unnecessarily added b's to make det  debt ( to link to Latin debitum), and dout doubt ( to link to Latin dubitare), c's to make scissors scissors and site scythe , h's to make anchor, school and herb, a c and an a to victuals, and due to misguided scholasticism an s to island ( which someone incorrectly thought came  from Latin insula)

But let us be a bit charitable about that. People do try to show off - and the English were no exception to the rule. And anyway, this confusion created by adding a few silent letters is  much less than than  he verbosity the Latin zealots, derogatorily dubbed as 'inkhorns' had inflicted- devaluate, ingent, attemptate, deruncinate, nidulate, abstergify.

Silent letters are also emblematic of the British love for non utilitarian heritage- like their  London cabs and even their monarchy as some uncharitably mock. So within the folds of silent letters, they have enveloped many phonological museums- retaining sounds which they no more make but had done so previously . So knight is a hark back to  the days when  both,  the k and the digraph gh  which had a throat clearing sound, were pronounced ( the word itself being derived from cneht in Old English). G in gnaw and gnome, w in write, when, where and wrap, the final b in lamb, the median t in thistle and listen - all these  had ceased to be pronounced but were lovingly retained in the spellings. 

So which is your favourite silent letter word- mnemonic or haemorrhage,phthisis, pthonic, chthonic or pterosaur? Is it gnome or is it racquet? Or are you still psyched out and commit a faux pas to misspell knife and marijuana? Say your prayers because there  are no kind teachers left in the schools.