In English, we don't pronounce the "p" at the beginning, but the Greeks did. Our alphabet is based on the Greek alphabet, but we adapted certain sounds to be more like those we were familiar with. So English speakers took out the "p" sound.
The silent P: Psychology with no receipt
The 'p', usually a popping sound made at the front of the mouth, is silenced when it precedes an 's'. Most of these words with silent 'p's are to do with the mind or the medicine of the mind: Psychology, psychiatry, psyche, psychological, psychotic or pseudo.
The Silent “P”
More often than not, these letter arrangements are found in words with Greek origins. For example, the prefix “psych–” derives from the Greek word psukhē, which refers to “the soul, mind, and spirit.” From here, many words have been created, like psychology and psychiatry, to list a few.
The silent P in RECEIPT is not original in English, but was added retrospectively in the 15–1600s to better align the word with its Latin root, 'recipere'. For a time, the related words CONCEIT and DECEIT gained a P too (making 'conceipt' and 'deceipt'), but only RECEIPT kept it.
Some English speakers – not all – simplify the word 'tsunami' by not pronouncing the initial 't', so that it fits in with the phonological rules of English. Often silent letters in English are actually diacritic letters. This means that rather than being pronounced, they change the pronunciation of another syllable.
As The Independent nicely says it, "Silent Letters are the ghosts of pronunciations past." Older versions of these words had pronounced Ns. Most of them come to English from Latin. For example autumn comes from the Latin autumnus and column comes from the Latin columna. In these words, the N was pronounced.
The letter P is also silent in a few other oddball words such as raspberry, receipt, and pterodactyl.
Silent “L” Patterns
If an “L” is found towards the end of the word, before the letters “f,” “v”, “k” and “m,” but after the letter “a,” then it's usually silent (behalf, calve, walk, almond).
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a New Latin word made up of five parts. The combining form pneumono- means “lung.” The word ultramicroscopic refers to something so small that it can't be seen by normal microscopes.
How do you pronounce pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis? Exactly as it is spelled, keeping in mind that in English the p is silent, the eu is a long u (“oo”), and the i in micro is a long i (“ay”).
However, silent ⟨k⟩ and ⟨g⟩ occur because of apheresis, the dropping of the initial sound of a word. These sounds used to be pronounced in Old and Middle English.
Why? Well, that's because English writing is full of silent letters. That means that while the letter appears in the word, it isn't pronounced when spoken aloud. Words may also sound different than they look because the pronunciation is borrowed from another language.
What is the origin of the silent 'b' at the end of English words such as lamb, comb, crumb and bomb? WE OWE the silent 'b' to the fact that centuries ago our ancestors pronounced a b-sound: climb was Old English climban, and bomb comes from Italian bomba. The b-sound was lost by about 1300.
The word comes from the Latin Pterodactylus, the creatures' genus name, which originated in the Greek pteron, meaning “wing,” and daktulos, meaning “finger.” Although technically not a dinosaur, this flying reptile thrived during the same time period is as often seen among dinosaurs in movies.
171: The silent l in the word 'salmon' — Pronuncian: American English Pronunciation.
Banana. This word is filled with 3 A's but we don't pronounce them all the same way because of syllable stress.
“Colonel” came to English from the mid-16th-century French word coronelle, meaning commander of a regiment, or column, of soldiers. By the mid-17th century, the spelling and French pronunciation had changed to colonnel. The English spelling also changed, and the pronunciation was shortened to two syllables.
There is only one letter in the language that is never silent. Can you guess what it is? The letter is V! There are various very valuable v-words, and that V is never silent!
Canadians are just as likely as Americans to use fall. And although we found quite a few instances of fall in Australian publications, Australian writers seem to favor autumn by a significant margin.
L is also silent in could, should, would, as well as in calf and half, and in chalk, talk, walk, and for many people in calm, palm, and psalm.