** Post written by Adrian.
Just the other day i was thinking about those words with silent letters in them. I’m going to list a few examples.
Kn (silent k), e.g. knife, knock, know and Gn at the beginning of a word (silent g), e.g. gnome, gnaw, gnu.
Ok so now you know what i am talking about. The problem comes when it is a person’s name. Do you know that there are many names of people who have those silent letters in them and unless you are a professional etymologist or French, high chances that you are going to mispronounce the name.
For example, my French friend’s name is Jacques. How would you pronounce this name just by using english? For me, I would pronounce this as “Jugs” but in actual fact there are 3 letters in that name not being pronounced. When I asked him about it, he immediately corrected me.
“No no, my copain (buddy for French), my name is pronounced as Jack.”
After which, he started explaining all those silent letters that are being used in French. It got me interested in the language so I am actually learning abit of French by playing a game called “The French Coach” on my DS lite. This game actually teaches you new word/letters each time you level up. After playing for a few days, I realised that reading French can be quite a challenge. You do not want to get the pronounciation wrong otherwise it will sound really funny. Hey, maybe next time I will be blogging in French. Haha.
** Additional note by Bernard.
Many people have pronounced my name wrongly too and it is so commonly mis-pronounced that it became the correct pronunciation. The name Bernard came from German and French origin so you cannot really use English to pronounce it. Now let me teach you how to pronounce correctly. No it is not Bur-nerd. It should be Bur-Nard. Ok now you guys know the correct way of pronouncing Bernard, remember not to call me wrongly again. Au revoir!
