Silent Letters When NOT to pronounce B D and L in English

Hi, there. My name is Emma, and in today's video, am going to teach you about silent sounds. So I'm going to teach you about and in words where we don't pronounce them. So, this is pronunciation video, as well as spelling video. Okay? So, if you have trouble with pronunciation and spelling, this video is for you. So, I'm going to first explain... Actually, let's first look at couple words. have the word, here: "climb", "Wednesday", and "walk". These words have something that's the same in all of them. Okay? They have multiple things that's the same in all of them, but want you to listen for the pronunciation. "Climb". Is there something in here we don't pronounce? "Climb". If you said: We do not pronounce the you are correct. What about "Wednesday"? "Wednesday". Am pronouncing the in this? "Wednesday". No. do not pronounce the Okay? And what about "walk"? "Walk". Is there something I'm not pronouncing in this word? "Walk". Do pronounce every letter? No. "Walk". Okay, so the If you said: "The I'm not pronouncing the you're correct. So, in this video we're going to look at bunch of words, and we're going to learn some rules with their pronunciation when we don't pronounce these sounds or these letters. Okay? So let's get started with words like "climb", the silent Okay? So, silent means sometimes in word we do not pronounce When is this true? Well, the first rule with the silent is we don't pronounce when there's an before it. Okay? So you notice "mb". If you see an and right after it, the becomes silent. So, we don't ever say: "Clim-b", no, no, no. We say: "Clime". For spelling, we have the but for pronunciation, we don't. So, let's look at some other words. "Dumb". Okay? Do you hear sound in there? "Dumb". No. So, again, you'll notice there's an and we see the so we know no pronunciation of the sound. For those of you who don't know the word "dumb", it means the same thing as stupid. You know, "That man is very dumb", "That man is very stupid", they have the same meaning. Okay, we have another word, here: "comb". Okay? So, "comb" is like you comb your hair in the morning. Do you hear the sound? "Comb". No, there's no sound, because again, we have this so that means no pronunciation. Okay. You see this? This is "thumb". We have our fingers and our thumb. Now, what do you notice in the spelling of this? You're going to notice pattern, here. We have so do we pronounce the No, we do not pronounce the So, we don't say: "Thum-b". No. We say: "Thum". Okay, "bomb". If you think about bomb, an explosion. Right? "Bomb". Again, same rule, if you have an you do not pronounce the So we don't say: "Bom-b", no. We say: "Bom", and we get rid of this. Okay, the last word we'll look at for "mb" pronunciation: "limb". So, your limbs are your arms and your legs. Okay? So, arms and legs are the same thing as your limbs. Now, do we pronounce the here? If you said: "No", you are correct, because as you can see, there's an so we don't pronounce the Okay, so there's another rule when it comes to pronunciation. Okay. want you to now look over here. and This word: "debt". Do you hear the in the pronunciation? "Debt". You shouldn't hear the did not pronounce the because when you have and right after usually you don't pronounce the There are always exceptions to this rule, but in general, if you see and usually you do not pronounce the So, "debt". I've heard many students say: "De-bt", and they get really tongue twisted. We don't... Don't worry about that, because you don't have to pronounce the Okay, let's look at some of our other words. "Doubt". Again, if you like the band No Doubt, okay, with Gwen Stefani, her old band, you don't have to worry because you don't pronounce the it's just: "Dout". This word: "subtle" is word many native speakers make mistakes with, because native speakers actually see the and they really want to say it, but it's incorrect. We don't say: "Sub-tle". No. You don't need to worry about the again because right after it is so we can get rid of this. "Sutle", "sutle", okay? So, now let's look at silent d's and when we don't pronounce d's in words. Okay, so the next sound we're going to look at is when we don't pronounce Okay? So, our first rule about silent is: is not pronounced in... When you see spelled and together. Okay? So, for example, there's job, "judge", like Judge Judy. It's similar to lawyer, not exactly. But if you know the word "judge", we don't say: "Jud-ge", okay? We don't pronounce the So, just cross that off: "juge". lot of these words you might not know. That's okay if you don't know these words. Part of this is just actually learning the rule, so when you do learn these words in the future or you learn other words, you'll know how to pronounce them. "Hedge". Okay? hedge is similar to bush or, you know, it's not exactly tree, but it's type of plant. "Hedge", again, you say and together, we don't pronounce the "Pledge". Okay? "Pledge", again... All of these, actually, kind of rhyme. You see the and the together, we don't pronounce the "Grudge". "Grudge", same rule, and together. "Gruge". "Dodge". Okay? and are together, so we get rid of... "Doge". So, again, if you see and don't pronounce the The other time is not pronounced, there are certain words where we don't pronounce the don't know the exact reason why. This probably has to do with the history of the language. So, I've given some common words where we just don't pronounce the The first one is: "Wednesday". Okay? For days of the week, we don't say: "Wed-nes-day". We say: "Wensday". So it's actually two syllable... Syllables. "Wens-day". "Wensday". So, actually this you can even take out. "Wensday". Okay? Also, if you like to eat sandwiches, you don't need to say: "Sand-wich", okay? We say: "Sanwich". So the is silent. "Sanwich". And finally, sometimes you want to talk about, you know, men who are handsome. And by the way, with this word "handsome", it kind of means beautiful or pretty, but it's for... Usually for men. We don't usually talk about handsome women. That has bit of different meaning. So, when we talk about men who are good looking, we use the word "handsome". know you see the word, here, "hand", but we don't say: "Hand-some". We say: "Hansome", so it's as if this isn't there. All right, so that's... So we've talked about silent b's and silent d's, now let's look at silent l's. So, is silent in words like: "calm" and "talk". Okay? So, what's the rule for this? When do we not pronounce Well, we don't pronounce after or So, after these vowels, we usually don't pronounce although there always are exceptions. Okay? So if you come across word where you do pronounce it, this is the general rule, and there are exceptions. So, "calm". Okay? This is similar to relax. "c-a-l-m", we see the here, so as result: "com". We don't say: "Ca-lm". No. "Com". All right. lot of students, this is very important word: "talk". Okay? lot of students want to say: "Ta-lk". ta-lked to my friend." We don't pronounce the so we say: "Tak". Another very important word, okay, we have the so this means this is silent: "Wak". know lot of students have trouble with the pronunciation of so this is really nice for you because these words you don't have to worry about pronouncing at all. "Half". So, again, "half", no because we have the here. Okay. Now, these are our modals: "would", "should", "could". "Would", "should", "could". We have and so afterwards, you don't need to worry about this "l"; it's silent. So, we say: "Woud", "shoud", "coud". Okay? All right. This word, lot of people mispronounce. It's type of fish that people like to eat: "salmon". lot of students want to say: "Sal-mon". like sal-mon." Don't worry about the it's silent. "Samon". Our next word: "folk", it means people. If you ever watch President Obama giving speech, he always used the word "folks", okay? He always says, you know... He's always talking... Instead of the word "people", he uses the word "folk" which is little bit more informal. So, with the word "folk", there is no pronunciation. "Fok". "Chalk", same thing. Again, we have the here, which means no "Chak". And I've already explained "could". The last word where... And there's many, these are just some examples of some common words. "Calf". Okay? So, "calf" is baby cow. For this word, "calf", you do not need to pronounce the "l"; it is silent. All right. So, there are many silent sounds in English which you don't have to pronounce. You might see them in the spelling, but just because you see them written does not mean you have to pronounce it. So, what I'd like you to do is come visit our website at www.engvid.com, and there you can practice all of these by taking our quiz. There's also other videos on pronunciation, so highly recommend you visit our website. Until next time, take care.