背单词者99.99%终身读不懂英语文章：Silent e（不发音的e）

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Silent e

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Silent e is a writing convention in English spelling.

A silent letter e at the end of a word often signals a specific pronunciation of the preceding vowel letter, as in the difference between "rid" /5rɪd/ and "ride" /5raɪd/.

rid[rid]vt.使摆脱, 使去掉

rid是一个闭音节——以辅音字母结尾。

ride[raid]v.骑, 乘

ride是相对开音节——以不发音的e结尾，它的使用是告诉您倒数第三位的元音字母i读其字母音[ai]。

我相信，能够掌握ride的小朋友（小学低年级学生），绝对可以轻松掌握pride：

pride[praid]n.自豪, 自尊(心), 骄傲, 傲慢vt.使自豪, 使自夸

p读[p]，类似于汉语拼音中的p。

 

This orthographic pattern followed the phonological changes of the Great Vowel Shift in late Middle English.

orthographic[7C:WE5^rAfik]adj.[语]正字法的, 拼字正确的（ortho+graph+ic）

ortho-[5C:WEJ]表示“直, 正直”之义，后接元音时去掉o。源自希腊语orthos [直的，正确的，对的]， -os是希腊语后缀，

 

great vowel shift (日耳曼语)主要元音转移

 

This difference is often described with the terms "short vowel" and "long vowel," even though the differences are in sound rather than duration.

even though adv.即使

short vowel 短元音

long vowel 长元音

长元音和短元音的区别多数是在声音上而不是在长短上。

The terms originated in studies of the Great Vowel Shift, where the differences in vowel length were actual differences in duration.^{[citation needed]}

originate[E5ridVineit]vt.引起, 发明, 发起, 创办vi.起源, 发生（origin+ate）

origin[5CridVin]n.起源, 由来, 起因, 出身, 血统, [数]原点

中古英语 origine [祖先]

origin是一个名词，增加后缀-ate构成动词originate。

把origin和originate作为两个单词统计，您的单词量一定有很大的水份。

 

 

Analysis of common spellings and pronunciations shows that the "silent e" most often—but not without exceptions—signals a different phoneme than a word spelled without it.

 

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/
rŭn	rūnɇ	/rʌn/ → /ruːn/
(see Help:IPA for English for an explanation of the symbols used);

When silent e occurs at the end of an English word, it converts a vowel to its "long" equivalent, which means that it makes a vowel say its "name", except u, which has two long sounds, instead of one.

 

If English were spelled with the traditional Romance language vowel values of the Latin alphabet, often these vowels would be written with another letter entirely.

Moreover, alternatives exist in English for most spellings that use silent e.

Depending on dialect, English has anywhere from thirteen to more than twenty separate vowel sounds (both monophthongs and diphthongs).

 

Silent e is one of the ways English spelling is able to use the Latin alphabet's five vowel characters to represent so many vowels.

 

There is usually only one consonant between the silent e and the other vowel; a double vowel is often seen as a cue that the 'e' is not silent (though exceptions exist).

Traditionally, the vowels /eɪ iː aɪ oʊ juː/ (as in bāit bēet bītɇ bōat beaūtȳ) are said to be the "long" counterparts of the vowels /æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ/ (as in băt bĕt bĭt bŏt bŭt) which are said to be "short".

 

This terminology reflects the historical pronunciation and development of those vowels; as a phonetic description of their current values, it is no longer accurate.

 

The values of the vowels these sounds are written with used to be similar to the values those letters had in French or Italian.

 

The traditional "long vowels" also closely correspond to the letter names those vowels bear in the English alphabet, and the letter name is usually an accurate guide to the value of the vowel that is affected by silent e.

 

This variety of vowels is due to the effects of the Great Vowel Shift that marked the end of Middle English and the beginning of Early Modern English.

Middle English n. 中世纪英语，中古英语

Modern English近代英语

 

The vowel shift gave current English "long vowels" values that differ markedly from the "short vowels" that they relate to in writing.

current english n.现代英语

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.

When final 'e' is not silent, this generally requires some sort of indication in English spelling.

 

This is usually done via doubling (employee: this word has employe as an obsolete spelling).

obsolete[5CbsEli:t]adj.荒废的, 陈旧的n.废词, 陈腐的人（ob+sole+te）

obsolescent[7CbsE5lesnt]adj.荒废的(ob+sole+scent)

ascent[E5sent]n.上升, (地位, 声望等的)提高, 攀登, 上坡路(a+scent)

descent[di5sent]n.降下, 降落, 世系, 血统, 侵袭(de+scent)

adolescent[7AdEu5lesnt]adj.青春期的, 青春的n.青少年(adole+scent)

adult是adole的变化

 

 When the silent e becomes a part of an inflection, its non-silent status can be indicated by a number of diacritical marks, such as a grave accent (learnèd) or a diaeresis (learnëd, Brontë).

grave accent[^rB:v]n.重音符

Other diacritical marks can appear in foreign words (compare résumé with nativized resume).

diacritical mark n. 变音符，附加符号

 

The 'a' group

The sounds of the 'a' group are some of the more dialectically complex features of contemporary modern English; the sounds that can be represented in modern English by 'a' include /æ/, /ɑː/, and /ɔ/. See broad A and cot–caught merger for some of the cross-dialect complexities of the English 'a' group.

The effect of silent e on English 'a' moves it towards /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 /eː/ 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/.

In some dialects, this diphthong is affected by the voiced or unvoiced quality of the following consonant so that it may be closer to [əɪ]; see Canadian raising.

The 'o' group

Short 'o', in contemporary English, tends to fall in with short 'a' and to share some of the complexities of that group; depending on dialect, the written short 'o' can represent /ɒ/, /ʌ/, and /ɑː/, as well as /ɔ/ and /oː/.

The usual effect of silent e on written 'o' is to fix it as a long o sound.

In several dialects of English, this long /oː/ is realized as a diphthong /oʊ/; and in some forms of southern British English, the leading element is centralized further, yielding /əʊ/.

All of the sounds in the previous sentence are in free variation with one another.