So i recently learned that....

[Armagon]

The word "queue" is actually just the letter "q" followed by four silent letters. But why though? All this time i was pronouncing it like the Spanish word "que" but no, it's just pronounced by literally saying the letter "q". Why? Why is it like this? Why do silent letters exist. WHAT'S THE POINT?! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY SPELLING TESTS I MESSED UP IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL BECAUSE I MISPELLED A WORD BY NOT PUTTING A SILENT LETTER WHERE IT BELONGED?! 

Sorry, i just really hate silent letters. I never understood their purpose. All it does is mess up pronunciations.

[Ϲharlie]

But the letters aren't silent. In this case, the Q makes the same sound as a K as in Qatar.

Well, at least the initial U and E aren't silent. :|

Edited March 25, 2018 by SCP-073 "Cain"

[Tryhard]

Having a silent G in my surname causes 90% of people to mispronounce it throughout my lifetime.

Silent G is my gangster name, though.

[Tryhard]

i suppose it's better than having a name that is just unfair

I have an irish colleague whos name is Meadhbh. It's pronounced like Mave.

Edited March 25, 2018 by Tryhard

[Jingle Jangle]

For 14 years and counting, my younger brother pronounce my first name with the E at the beginning being silent.  Only when he's upset with me he says my name correctly. It's something.

[Dragoncat]

You must hate Gadolt's name then...the lt is silent. But I guess just "Gado" doesn't look as badass for a badass dude like him.

48 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

i suppose it's better than having a name that is just unfair

 

OMG this. I haven't told anybody on here but Ana my real name, so here goes. It's Tanae, pronounced tuh-nay. My mom named me that because she wanted to have me "today" and she liked the alliteration and I think it's so stupid. I've had it misspelled, mispronounced, called completely different names like Tanya, I can't find it on a coke bottle, and when I hear somebody say "today" sometimes I think they're talking to me.

But in the case of queue, I guess it's just because Q is one letter and not a word? To distinguish it from the letter?

[Ertrick36]

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

The word "queue" is actually just the letter "q" followed by four silent letters.

They aren't silent; they're just waiting their turn.

I stole that joke from a meme, don't flame me pls

[Acacia Sgt]

Silent letters? Please, you don't know silent letters until you meet the Spanish H... the one letter whose job is to be silent 95%~ of the time...

[DragonFlames]

5 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Silent letters? Please, you don't know silent letters until you meet the Spanish H... the one letter whose job is to be silent 95%~ of the time...

Isn't it the same in French and other Romanic languages?

In terms of weird pronunciation, there is a weird case in German in which an "e" is sometimes pronounced as a mixture between a very short "a" and "e". Linguists call it "Schwa" and it's usually the last letter of a word (ex. Flasche (bottle)). I know many learners of German who have problems with that, which is understandable.

[Armagon]

5 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Silent letters? Please, you don't know silent letters until you meet the Spanish H... the one letter whose job is to be silent 95%~ of the time...

Yeah, the silent H gets me all the time, even as someone who's been speaking Spanish at an early age.

It's weird. My parents, two Venezuelans, taught me Spanish (because ironically English was the first language i learned) but they really only taught me how to speak it. When it came to writing and reading it, i can still do it, just not as good as speaking it.

Ah whatever, i still have a B in AP Spanish.

[Magical Glace]

11 hours ago, Tryhard said:

i suppose it's better than having a name that is just unfair

I have an irish colleague whos name is Meadhbh. It's pronounced like Mave.

My surname is pronounced exactly as it's spelled.  People assume it's foreign and therefore must not be pronounced exactly as it's spelled, and still manage to totally bungle it due to that assumption.  

It is foreign, but as it was originally written in a different alphabet we can write it entirely phonetically.

[Ycine]

Silent letters in English. Because in French, "queue" is nothing more than a "tail".

Wait, now I realized that there's also 2 Silent Letters in it in French but in our case it is to make the distinction between "que"(=what), "queue"(=tail) and "queux" as in Maître Queux (=Master Chef).

[De Geso]

Silent letters are sometimes the reason a word is pronounced a certain way.

[Acacia Sgt]

4 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

Isn't it the same in French and other Romanic languages?
 

 

From what I once read up, yeah, it's the same case for them. Except for like, Romanian, where there are more exceptions than in, say, Spanish.

[KnightOfNohr]

My last name has a silent letter (w). However, that's not what I'm posting about. Did you know that there are four letters in the English alphabet that don't use their own sound in their name? Those being H (only in the American pronunciation), Q, and W.

[Junkhead]

lolEnglish

[KnightOfNohr]

You forgot a space. You also omitted a period.

[Integrity]

17 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

They aren't silent; they're just waiting their turn.

I stole that joke from a meme, don't flame me pls

i love this

[claire]

its not that hard idk u can do it