THE SILENT OR THE OMNIPRESENCE OF SOMETHING ‘ABSENT’

For the first-year students, the most puzzling feature of standard British English must be the silent . Being mostly exposed to American English, through all sorts of media channels – movies, music, social media etc. – their first lecture in British English Phonetics and Phonology sometimes proves to be a baffling experience due to the ‘omnipresence’ of the silent in standard British English pronunciation.The present paper aims at shedding some light on this topic and at the same time provide learners with some tips for the ‘non-pronunciation’ of the letter .