Silent ''e''

In English orthography, many words feature a silent ⟨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 sound changes, including the Great Vowel Shift affecting long vowels, the former presence of the vowel sound represented by the ⟨e⟩ left its mark in the form of a change in the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. This can be seen in words such as rid /rɪd/ and ride /raɪd/, in which the presence of the final, unpronounced ⟨e⟩ appears to alter the sound of the preceding ⟨i⟩. A silent ⟨e⟩ which has this effect is sometimes called a magic ⟨e⟩. The normal effect is to convert a short vowel sound to a long one, but because of the complications of the Great Vowel Shift, the long vowel is not simply a lengthened version of the corresponding short one, and in most cases (as in the example of ride) is in fact a diphthong.

This vowel-altering effect of silent ⟨e⟩ entered into modern English orthography, and is present in new words (such as bike) in which there is no historical reason for the presence of the ⟨e⟩ other than the need to mark the pronunciation of the preceding vowel.

Effect of silent ⟨e⟩ on simple vowels

Without silent ⟨e⟩ With silent ⟨e⟩ IPA transcription
slăt slātɇ /slæt/ → /sleɪt/
mĕt mētɇ /mɛt/ → /miːt/
grĭp grīpɇ /ɡrɪp/ → /ɡraɪp/
cŏd cōdɇ /kɒd/ → /koʊd/
cŭt cūtɇ /kʌt/ → /kjuːt/

When silent ⟨e⟩ occurs at the end of an English word, it usually converts a preceding vowel to its "long" equivalent, which means that it makes a vowel "say its name" (except in the case of ⟨y⟩, which has the same pronunciation as ⟨i⟩ – compare byte/bite).

Depending on dialect, English has anywhere from 13 to more than 20 separate vowel phonemes, both monophthongs and diphthongs. Silent ⟨e⟩ is one of the ways English orthography is able to use the Latin alphabet's five vowel characters to represent so many vowel sounds. There is usually only one consonant between the silent ⟨e⟩ and the preceding vowel; a double consonant may be a cue that the ⟨e⟩ is not silent and does not affect the preceding vowel (as in Jesse and posse).

Traditionally, the vowels /eɪ iː aɪ oʊ juː/ are said to be the "long" counterparts of the vowels /æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ/, respectively, which are said to be "short". This terminology reflects the historical pronunciation and development of those vowels, but as a phonetic description of their current values it is no longer accurate. The English values of the letters ⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩ used to be similar to the values those letters had in Spanish, French or Italian, namely [a], [e], [i], [o], [u]. The Great Vowel Shift leading to Early Modern English gave current English "long vowels" values that differ markedly from the "short vowels" that they relate to in writing. Since English has a literary tradition that goes back into the Middle English period, written English continues to use Middle English writing conventions to mark distinctions that had been reordered by the chain shift of the long vowels. However, the pronunciation of ⟨u⟩ before silent ⟨e⟩, found mainly in borrowings from French and Latin, is a consequence not of the Great Vowel Shift but of a different series of changes.

When final ⟨e⟩ is not silent, this may be indicated in various ways in English spelling. When representing /iː/, this is usually done via doubling (employee, with employe as an obsolete spelling). Non-silent ⟨e⟩ can also be indicated by a diacritical mark, such as a grave accent (learnèd) or a diaeresis (learnëd, Brontë). Other diacritical marks are preserved in loanwords (résumé, café), or introduced on this pattern (maté), though these diacritics are frequently omitted. Other words have no indication that the ⟨e⟩ is not silent (pace, Latin loan meaning "with due respect to").

The ⟨a⟩ group

The sounds of the ⟨a⟩ group are some of the more dialectically-complex features of contemporary modern English; the phonemes represented in modern "short" ⟨a⟩ include /æ/, /ɑː/, and /ɔː/. See broad A and cot–caught merger for some of the cross-dialect complexities of the English ⟨a⟩ group. A silent ⟨e⟩ typically moves ⟨a⟩ to /eɪ/.

The ⟨e⟩ group

Silent ⟨e⟩ typically moves ⟨e⟩ to /iː/. This change is generally consistent across nearly all English dialects today, though previously many dialects used /eɪ/ instead before migrating to /iː/. Some parts of Mid-Ulster English still use /eː/.

The ⟨i⟩ group

For the "long vowel" represented in written English by ⟨i⟩, the effect of silent ⟨e⟩ is to turn it into a diphthong /aɪ/.

The ⟨o⟩ group

Short ⟨o⟩ often falls in with short ⟨a⟩ and shares some of the complexities of that group. Variously, the written short ⟨o⟩ can represent /ɒ/, /ʌ/, and /ɔː/. The usual effect of silent ⟨e⟩ on written ⟨o⟩ is to fix it as a long /oʊ/ sound.

The ⟨u⟩ group

Short ⟨u⟩ can variably represent either /ʌ/ or /ʊ/, as a result of the foot–strut split. Silent ⟨e⟩ generally turns ⟨u⟩ to its corresponding long version /juː/, which developed from Middle English /ɪu/. Variably by dialect and even word, the /j/ in this /juː/ may drop (rune /ˈruːn/, lute /ˈluːt/), causing a merger with /uː/; in other cases, the /j/ coalesces with the preceding consonant (issue /ˈɪsjuː/→/ˈɪʃuː/), meaning that the silent ⟨e⟩ can affect the quality of a consonant much earlier in the word (educate (/ˈɛdʒukeɪt/, nature /ˈneɪtʃər/).

Silent ⟨e⟩ and consonants

Along with indicating the vowel, the silent ⟨e⟩ also functions as a front vowel to indicate a soft ⟨c⟩ or soft ⟨g⟩. For example:

where /s/ is the expected outcome of the ⟨ce⟩ digraph, and the ⟨g⟩ in huge is pronounced /dʒ/. Silent ⟨e⟩ is used in some words with ⟨dg⟩ in which it does not lengthen a vowel: rĭdgɇ, sĕdgɇ, hŏdgɇ-pŏdgɇ. Spelling such words with ⟨j⟩, the other letter that indicates that sound, does not occur in native or nativized English words.

Truly silent ⟨e⟩

In some common words that historically had long vowels, silent ⟨e⟩ no longer has its usual lengthening effect. For example, the ⟨o⟩ in come (as compared to in cone) and in done (as compared to in dome). This is especially common in some words that historically had ⟨f⟩ instead of ⟨v⟩, such as give and love; in Old English, /f/ became /v/ when it appeared between two vowels (OE giefan, lufu), while a geminated ⟨ff⟩ lost its doubling to yield /f/ in that position. This also applies to a large class of words with the adjective suffix -ive, such as captive (where, again, the ⟨i⟩ is not lengthened, unlike in hive), that originally had -if in French.

Some loanwords from French (promenade) retained their French silent ⟨e⟩, called e muet or e caduc, which has no effect on the preceding vowel.

Some English words vary their accented syllable based on whether they are used as nouns or as adjectives. In a few words such as minute, this may affect the operation of silent ⟨e⟩: as an adjective, minúte (/maɪˈnjuːt/, "small") has the usual value of ⟨u⟩ followed by silent ⟨e⟩, while as a noun mínute (/ˈmɪnɪt/, the unit of time) silent ⟨e⟩ does not operate. See initial-stress-derived noun for similar patterns that may give rise to exceptions.

History

Silent ⟨e⟩, like many conventions of written language that no longer reflect current pronunciations, was not always silent. In Chaucer's Balade, the first line does not scan properly unless what appears to current eyes to be a silent ⟨e⟩ is pronounced:

Hyd, Absolon, thy giltè tresses clerè

Gilte ends in the same sound as modern English Malta. In Middle English, this final schwa had some grammatical significance, although that was mostly lost by Chaucer's time. It was elided regularly when a word beginning with a vowel came next. The consequences of silent ⟨e⟩ in contemporary spelling reflect the phonology of Middle English. In Middle English, as a consequence of the lax vowel rule shared by most Germanic languages, vowels were long when they historically occurred in stressed open syllables; they were short when they occurred in "checked" or closed syllables. Thus bide /ˈbiːdə/ had a long vowel, while bid /bid/ had a short one.

The historical sequence went something like this:

The writing convention of silent ⟨e⟩ indicates that different vowel qualities had become phonemic, and were preserved even when phonemic vowel length was lost.

Long vowels could arise by other mechanisms. One of these is known as "compensatory lengthening"; this occurred when consonants formerly present were lost: maid is the modern descendant of Old English mægde. In this example, the g actually became a glide /j/, so in a sense, the length of the consonant stayed where it always had been, and there was no "compensation." The silent ⟨e⟩ rule became available to represent long vowels in writing that arose from other sources; Old English brŷd, representing *bruʒd-i-, became Modern English bride.

The rules of current English spelling were first set forth by Richard Mulcaster in his 1582 publication Elementarie. Mulcaster called silent ⟨e⟩ "qualifying ⟨e⟩", and wrote of it:

It altereth the sound of all the vowells, euen quite thorough one or mo consonants as, máde, stéme, éche, kínde, strípe, óre, cúre, tóste sound sharp with the qualifying E in their end: whereas, màd, stèm, èch, frind, strip, or, cut, tost, contract of tossed sound flat without the same E, And therefor the same loud and sharp sound in the word, calleth still for the qualifying e, in the end, as the flat and short nedeth it not. It qualifyeth no ending vowell, bycause it followeth none in the end, sauing i. as in daie, maie, saie, trewlie, safetie, where it maketh i, either not to be heard, or verie gentlie to be heard, which otherwise wold sound loud and sharp, and must be expressed by y. as, deny, aby, ally. Which kinde of writing shalbe noted hereafter. It altereth also the force of, c, g, s, tho it sound not after them, as in hence, for that, which might sound henk, if anie word ended in c. in swinge differing from swing, in vse differing from vs.

Mulcaster also formulated the rule that a double letter, when final, indicated a short vowel in English, while the absence of doubling and the presence of silent ⟨e⟩ made the vowel long. In modern English, this rule is most prominent in its effects on the written "a" series:

Digraphs are sometimes treated as single letters for purposes of this rule:

See also

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