Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[palleyhsu]

Dear teachers

Could you please tell me , why we keep the aphonic letter in a word, espeicialy the first one? For example, like "psychoanalyse", we don't pronounce "p"，but we still keep it in the word? Thanks a lot!!
Best wishes
Palley Hsu

[CP]

Unlike completely phonetic languages like Spanish, English spelling is unpredictable and difficult. English will borrow words from any language, often retaining the original spelling, or something close to it.

Words with Greek origin that begin with the Greek letter psi, like "psyche," retain the initial "p" even though it is silent to us. (It isn't silent in other languages, and the same can be said for the silent "p" in "pneumatic" and others.)

All prior spelling reforms for English, attempting to give us a sensible, phonetic set of rules to follow, have failed. We don't have any regular way to re-spell words, so don't expect to see "psychological" or "pneumatic" to lose those silent letters anytime soon.
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