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In English orthography, many words feature a silent e (single, final, non-syllabic ‘e’), most commonly at the end of a word or morpheme. Typically it represents a vowel sound that was formerly pronounced, but became silent in late Middle English or Early Modern English . In a large class of words, as a consequence of a series of historical ...
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress).Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel or with certain other vowels that are described as ...
Letter frequency is the number of times letters of the alphabet appear on average in written language. Letter frequency analysis dates back to the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi ( c.801 –873 AD), who formally developed the method to break ciphers. Letter frequency analysis gained importance in Europe with the development of movable type in 1450 ...
Vowels other than /a/ are often syncopated in unstressed word-internal syllables, especially when in contact with liquid consonants or, to a lesser extent, nasal consonants or /s/. Cf. /ˈanɡulus, ˈkalida, ˈspekulum/ > /ˈanɡlʊs, ˈkalda, ˈspɛklu/. In a few words, unstressed initial syllables followed by /r/ experience syncope. Cf.
A consonant may be added to separate vowels in hiatus, as is the case with linking and intrusive R in English. drawing → draw-r-ing; Bridging consonant clusters. A consonant may be placed between consonants in a consonant cluster where the place of articulation is different (such as if one consonant is labial and the other is alveolar).
Fortis and lenis consonants may be distinguished by tenseness or other characteristics, such as voicing, aspiration, glottalization, velarization, length, and length of nearby vowels. Fortis and lenis were coined for languages where the contrast between sounds such as 'p' and 'b' does not involve voicing (vibration of the vocal cords ).
For example, in such words as little and bottle, one might view le as an "endocentric" digraph for /əl/, or view e as an empty letter; similarly, with bu or u in buy and build. Not all silent letters are completely redundant: Silent letters can distinguish between homophones, e.g. in/inn; be/bee; lent/leant. This is an aid to readers already ...
Thou. v. t. e. The suffix -ly in English is usually a contraction of -like, similar to the Anglo-Saxon -lice and German -lich. [1] It is commonly added to an adjective to form an adverb, but in some cases it is used to form an adjective, such as ugly or manly. When "-ly" is used to form an adjective, it is attached to a noun instead of an ...