Silent letters

A long time ago in a land far far away I struck up a conversation with a middle-aged American who assured me that some of the older folks in his community still pronounced the K-sound in the word knife. I happened to be on the island of Roanoke, in North Carolina, and my interlocutor was a local resident.  I never got to hear that unusual pronunciation, but I don't question the man's account. Some pronunciation habits die hard and Roanoke was, after all, the site of a colony that once attempted to be the first permanent English settlement in what is today U. S. soil. Their dialect is, in many ways, a direct descendant from the region of Devonshire in England. Still, people's perceptions of their own language are often unreliable. I have encountered many a Spaniard who decried the loss of the labiodental [v] in Spanish, even though it was never a phoneme in standard Castilian. It does make sense, though, that some of the characteristics of the English variety spoken in Roanoke should be old. Still, I have no proof that the medieval consonant cluster [kn] has really survived into the 21st century. In European English it faded away around 1650. Did it manage to survive in the Outer Banks of North Carolina for over three hundred years? Who "K-nows"?

I sometimes use that anecdote to illustrate the fact that there was a time in the English language when the K-sound was actually pronounced in words such as knight, know, knee and knife. Unfortunately for foreign learners, the pronunciation of English evolved quite a bit while its spelling remained essentially unchanged. And that is the reason for the chaotic orthographic system we all enjoy today. Over the course of a few centuries, however, some of the consonant sounds that ceased to be articulated are still represented by the so-called "silent letters". Here's a brief sample of letters that represent no sounds:

• L in palm, balm, calm, half, salmon
• B in climb, bomb, thumb, comb
• W in write, sword, wrong

This is, of course, the cause of untold headaches. There are many other surprising examples. Just think of the "p" in words such as corps, cupboard or receipt. Nevertheless, I suspect that you'd rather watch a video about silent letters than read a wordy explanation of their origins, which is why I suggest you take some minutes of your time and enjoy the following clip:

So, does that happen overnight? Clearly not. The process whereby a sound is lost may go on for decades or even centuries, but it is always identifiable. Right now, in 2026, we have two pronunciations for the word human: with and without the H-sound. That means that the word human might be in the process of losing its initial consonant. It is not an isolated case of phonetic change. Some older speakers on the East Coast still pronounce the word whale as [hweil] and white as [hwaIt]. Alas, their children have already abandoned that pronunciation. Without any young speakers pronouncing the [h] in whale. we can safely say that the sound is virtually defunct. Similarly we can see now that some speakers articulate a [d] or a [t] in the word handsome. Most don't. Sooner of later those exceptional productions will vanish altogether and the "d" in handsome, pretty much like the [h] in whale, will be officially silent.

The main takeaway from this post should be that languages are always changing. Different pronunciations may compete for a while, but eventually one becomes mainstream and the other falls by the wayside. Silent letters remind us all of this very process. In a way, they are the headstone next to the grave where nonexistent sounds lie. Your duty as an English learner is to know which sounds are gone and which are still around. You don't want to pronounce phonetic cadavers or create zombie phonemes. If you do you may one day mention the U. S. Marine "Corpse".

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N. B. Should you be interested in listening to a reconstructed evolution of English you may want to check out the first three minutes of this fascinating video.

Speed

The ability to speak fast (and clearly) without making mistakes is usually a dead giveaway that a speaker is highly competent in a foreign language. Shockingly enough, this skill is rarely mentioned in textbooks. I have taught English as a foreign language in Germany, the United States, France and Spain, and I don't remember seeing any reference to the benefits of speaking fast nor does it seem to be a concern amongst most educators. Allusions to language efficiency do exist, but they tend to focus heavily on lexical accuracy and correct syntax, not on the speed with which you speak. And even if it is true that many C1 manuals devote pronunciation sections to connected speech, teachers usually tiptoe around those exercises.

Without fail, though, whenever I bring up this subject all kinds of defense mechanisms kick in: "You don't need to be a fast talker to get your message across" they say. And, of course, that is true. "Fast speech can be disconcerting". That is not wrong, either. Indeed speaking fast can sometimes have negative consequences. For example, it can make you seem nervous or insecure, which ultimately undermines your authority. A fast talking speed is actually not recommended when you discuss a cognitively demanding subject. As a matter of fact, I suggest you slow down your pace when you express complex ideas so that your interlocutor can process the information that you dump on them.

That said, when you are talking in a group speed can definitely be critical. A slow pace may make you sound like a textbook whereas a quick rhythm can help you come off as more authentic or natural and might even be necessary when you try and match a particular mood. Think about it for a second. Can you really be enthusiastic about something if you speak slowly? Can you show your annoyance while explaining the various reasons why you find a particular behavior unacceptable? Can you express your disbelief by saying what the hell are you talking about? at a slow speed? Probably not.

And, since speed is best perceived when you listen to a language that you don't quite understand, I think it can be eye-opening to check out the following short:

So, should you care about speaking "fast"? The short answer is: not necessarily, but in certain situations speed can truly be the cherry on the cake. Sometimes you should make a thoughtful use of pauses and command authority by speaking slowly. On other occasions you might want to speed things up a little so that your words fit a specific mood. At the end of the day, a sophisticated speaker knows when they can rattle off their thoughts machine gun-like and when they should just take it easy.

Instead of "person"

The advent of AI has brought about a quiet lexical revolution. What do you call a chatbot when you have a "chat" with it? Is it really a conversation partner or just a machine? A programme? A piece of software?  A chatbot is not a being, because it is not alive, but it does things in a way that doesn't necessarily feel machine-like. So, what should we call all of these AIs? Historian Yubal Harari has suggested the term "entity", which I don't dislike. It is in keeping with the dictionary definition, namely, "something that has separate and distinct existence and objective or conceptual reality". So far so good, right? Problems arise, though, when an AI is designated by referring to the job it performs. Let's not forget that, in English, a person who is stunning is a stunner, just like a piece of news that you find shocking can be referred to as "a shocker". Consider these sentences:

• That was shocking news
• It came as a shock to me
• It shocked me to my core
• That was quite a shocker

So, the "-er" ending does not imply humanity, ergo... a computer that teaches you something could technically be... a teacher? If we accept that label then we should also be ready to embrace the fact that an AI that books rooms for a hotel is an agent... 😬

In the video below you can see a woman trying to get an AI to admit that it is not human and the AI refusing to accept that it is not a person. Just pay attention to the vocabulary that it uses.

Just like the rise of the cell phone made it necessary to coin the term "landline" to refer to the old telephones, and the invention of the electric guitar forced manufacturers to come up with the labels classical guitar or acoustic guitar, the popularity of AI-driven technology has brought about a series of changes which demand serious consideration.

The AI in the video self-identifies first as a "real authorized booking agent", then as a "live agent" and finally as a "virtual agent". Never as an AI, a language model, a computer program, a robot or a machine. I can only assume that very soon companies will try to normalize the label "virtual person" so they can say they have "people" answering phone calls without (technically) lying.

This brave new state of affairs is to me a reminder of the fact that some languages are better equipped than others to adapt to certain changes. In this particular case I think languages like Ojibwe (spoken in an area straddling the North of the USA and the south of Canada)  have an interesting advantage over European tongues. Why? Because the grammar of Ojibwe considers a feature that Indo-European languages lack: animacy. To Ojibwe speakers nouns are animate or inanimate, that is to say, living or non-living. Interestingly enough, this feature can affect even verbs. For example, in order to say "the bird is white" an Ojibwe speaker must use the animate verb form waabishkizi, but the sentence "the shoe is white" uses the inanimate verb form: waabishkaa. To complicate matters further, sometimes a word can take the animate or inanimate form depending on the circumstances. Thus a doll, whose default form is inanimate, is referred to in the animate form when it is used in a ceremony. Long story short, it is a lot easier to hint at the to the nature of an AI in Ojibwe than it is in English or Spanish.

There is an online app called Friend that offers interactions with AI entities that behave like friends (!). And if you think that is creepy, don't look into Replika, which allows you to chat to an "AI companion" (or romantic partner). Is it okay to develop a relationship with a chatbot and then state that you have a friend?

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find the right words to name new realities. When I say I play the guitar I don't feel the need to specify if I refer to a classical, acoustic or electric guitar, but we might soon find ourselves in a situation in which words like agent or boyfriend might be ambiguous. Will we be compelled to refer to friends and partners without specifying if they are human or AI? Will it be acceptable to regard your interactions with a chatbot app as part of your "social life"? Will neologisms be necessary to name those connections? The very fact that I am considering these question already feels rather disturbing, but, then again, that is the world we're living in.