Sunday 12 May 2019

unvoiced

Found among Sentence First’s latest batch of carefully curated language links comes this quite provocative and revealing of the unapologetic nature of English orthography abecedary of silent letters—demonstrating how from A to Z every letter can be silent (with perhaps one exception), or virtually so. We are all accustomed to occasional superfluous g or the errant p or k in a word that’s forgotten its original mission but what about the a (or s for that matter) in aisle, the first d of Wednesday?  Merriam-Webster addresses each malingering letter with a clever couplet filled with examples.