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There are a few words where one or more pronunciations create an actual silent vowel, such as the I in "business" and in "family" or the E in "different."

Vowels are often "silent" (not sounded) when paired with other vowels (digraphs), or can affect the pronunciation of other vowels without being sounded themselves.

Silent A

  • In EA words -- each, peach, teach, team, bean, cleave, heave, lead (verb or primary position), fear, gear, bread, meant
  • In AI words - aisle
  • In OA or AO words -- boar, coal, loan, float, cocoa, pharaoh,

Silent E

  • Ending words with vowel-consonant-vowel -- care, fate, fete, kite, like, dole, hone, dote, cute, fuse, butte,
  • In EA words -- bear, pear, tear, lead (element)
  • In EI words -- heist, feisty
  • In EU words -- feud, eugenics, euphemism
  • In OE words -- shoe, toe
  • In UE words -- fuel, hue, queue

Silent I

  • In AI words-- bail, pail, tail, lain, paint, bait, aileron, maize
  • In EI and IE words -- deceive, believe, retrieve
  • In IO words -- fashion, cushion
  • In UI words -- juice, sluice, suit

Silent O (other than OU as ow, or oo as in rouge, roulette)

  • EO words -- jeopardy, leopard, people
  • OU words -- country, southern

Silent U (other than OU as ow, or oo as in rouge, roulette)

  • AU words : gauge, laugh, guard
  • UE words : guess, guest, league, plague, tongue, catalogue
  • UI words : guide, guile, guilt, build, guitar
  • Other words through usage : business (U sounds like I)
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12y ago

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