5 ms·
> English has not managed to shed its own. The language suffers similarly (and for the same reason) with the silent letters in doubt, plumber, subtle, indict, a
by mfontani 5y ago
> English has not managed to shed its own. The language suffers similarly (and for the same reason) with the silent letters in doubt, plumber, subtle, indict, and island.
I'm confused. Which letter is silent in "plumber"?
- cbowal 5y agoThe "b"
- housecarpenter 5y agoEnglish doesn't tolerate word-final -mb. It's always pronounced as -m, and the -b isn't pronounced when a suffix is added either. Other examples: dumb, tomb, comb, womb, numb, thumb, catacomb, Coulomb. All of these have a silent B.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoIn most of these cases the final B is itself silent but elongates the previous wovel for me. "dumb" is pronounced longer than "dum", and it's the U that gets elongated. The difference is subtle, but my native tongue has "long wovels" so I'm trained to detect the difference.
- CRConrad 5y agoPaljon suomalaisia täällä?
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoEmpiirisesti ehkä muutama tuhannesta.
- julesnp 5y agoThat's true for the -omb words, but I've never heard anyone elongate the 'u' in any of the -umb words, at least not in Canadian English.
- ghc 5y agoWait, what? None of those have a silent B, at least in my region. Are there places that pronounce the same as womb as "woom"?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kmm 5y agoCan I ask what region you live in? Pronouncing <womb> as /wuːm/ is the dominant pronunciation in every English speaking country, so much so that I can't recall ever hearing it differently, and I'm surprised you've never heard it. It's not a recent change either, the /b/ disappeared somewhere before the 14th century.
- ghc 5y agoNew England. I've never paid enough attention when traveling to notice (those words aren't exactly the most common to hear), but when I say "woom" my lips end closed, and when I say "womb" my lips end opened after closing. The b isn't "voiced", per se, but it does change the way the word sounds to me. And to be fair, I am aware New England English is its own distinct thing so I might have grown up in a bubble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_English
- selimthegrim 5y agoNE Ohio and I always pronounced the b too (akin to New England I guess)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- brabel 5y agoI had the same question :D from other comments, it seems a bit controversial, no? Another one I, as a non native speaker, find odd, is "iron". People just say it as "ion", dropping the 'r', right?? At least that's what I hear.
- jdminhbg 5y agoThe 'r' and 'o' are transposed: it's pronounced 'iorn.'
- brabel 5y agoAccording to this[1], that's only in the USA... British English appears to drop the 'r' entirely (that's why I never hear it as I've lived in Europe and Australia)... and the American pronounciation seems so odd, is there any other word where the 'r' and the vowel are swapped like that? I know only one in British/Australian with "centre" being pronounced "center", but can't think of any others. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/iron https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/iron
- CRConrad 5y ago> British English appears to drop the 'r' entirely Yeah, but the Brits make up for that by stuffing a lot of extraneous 'r's in between other words. (TBF, that's a kind of sensible simplification of pronunciation: it's used when one word ends and the next starts with a wovel, to ease the transition.)
- kyrra 5y agoI oddly discovered this as well (not something I thought about) when watching a playthrough video for a boardgame (Brass: Birmingham: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzxf4tfq9as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzxf4tfq9as ). In there, he says "iron" as it should be said given the letters in the word. My wife and I are somewhat working to actually say the word that way now.
- CRConrad 5y ago> I'm confused. Which letter is silent in "plumber"? I was taught it's pronounced "plummer". So, the 'b'.