How the English language would sound if silent letters weren’t silent - BBC

[@sambritten04]

Fun Fact : Silent letters in English are like ghosts of the past! They exist because English borrowed words from other languages (like Latin, French, and Old Norse), and while pronunciation changed over time, the spelling often stayed the same. For example, the "k" in "knight" was once pronounced (k-nicht) and the "b" in "debt" reminds us of its Latin root debitum. These silent letters are history hiding in plain sight!

[@amytih47]

Thank you so much for sharing that, very interesting 👍🏼

[@snand-c6w]

How kind of you to share this delightful bit of history with us. Thank you 🙏🏼

[@daniellamcgee4251]

Dr. Johnson, who started compiling the first English dictionary, wanted to standardise the creative varying spelling of the time, with a nod towards word origins (e.g. 'colour ' referencing French 'couleur). Dr. Johnson assumed, or guessed some of the origins and didn't always get it right. 😅

[@daniellamcgee4251]

Later, in America, Noah Webster wanted everyone in the Brave New World to be literate, so created his dictionary to be more phonetic. Hence, the spelling differences between English English and American English (e.g. color).

[@joanneaugust6611]

And as a German, you have that moment of realisation where you get that both words have the same root. Like your example knight and the German "Knecht" which is pronounced almost the same. These days it's rarely used, and if so, it mostly refers to farm workers in the past, or is used ij a biblical context. But basically a Knecht is nothing other than a worker and the employer of kind of work may be put in front of it. And soldiers used to be called "Landsknechte" - knights of the land, aka the lord, duke, king or whoever ruled the territory.

[@SchwarzesSchaefle]

Suddenly it sounds like a normal Germanic language again!

[@mickymouse8439]

Exactly!

[@SadisticPrince]

Yep 😂😂😂

[@cazcade77]

yup

[@diegosiles1373]

😂I'm laughing like hell and I'm Spanish ❤🎉😂

[@singingsanja167]

Spoken by a German!...🤣🤣🤣

[@Aceofspades2006]

This is just my Icelandic grandparents talking English

[@kurtaslan1511]

Icelander would sound better lol

[@robertalexandrugheorghe660]

They did great considering they're Icelandic and grandparents 😄👏

[@cherrieb9314]

Knee in Norwegian is k-ne (k-neh in pronunciation), and knife is k-niv (k-niev). Old Norse is definitely there in English!

[@nicbarrax76]

Same in Swedish, k-nä, k-niv. 😄

[@VenosEvans]

Actually knee is German means the same thing.

[@amann1697]

Same in Danish

[@paddor]

Makes me wonder where the word Messer came from in German.

[@elsecallerjasnah]

Same in Dutch, the k before an n is always pronounced.

[@WendyHein]

He's so funny and unlike a lot of comedians, manages to entertain without feeling the need to be coarse or fithy. Makes for a nice change. .Stumbled on this just before my bedtime and it's lovely to be able to go to sleep with a smile on my face.

[@gerh33]

Well said, ‘filthy’ or ‘blue’ comedy is stupid, anachronistic, and a relic of ‘Carry On’ rubbish - I love Bill Bailey fire the same reason, he’s able to be funny, sharp, witty, accurate all without resorting to that low-intellect tripe. 👍

[@SSkedd]

Sadly he swears more when not being filmed. I was disappointed when I saw him live in person.

[@michaelbaysorensen]

The same here. He is very funny!

[@DaingerMouse2]

@@SSkeddyep totally agree. But he was still brilliant.

[@mds4514]

The truth teller of our generation.

[@SCD-BOY]

Very well delivered joke, the memory skills are insane.

[@ma5thew]

Exactly what I was going to write. To remember all these "wrong" pronunciation, he has to have amazing memory, especially delivering it so casually and continuously without one mistake. Great work as always.

[@Amperzand]

@@ma5thew He will likely have had to practice this a lot. I bet his wife and kids had to hear it over and over and with lots of mistakes beforehand!

[@colinjames2469]

sorry, I forgot what you wrote

[@GoodMorning-hq2yi]

I really hoped he'd say "queueing"...

[@paddotk]

Kway-way-ing? :p

[@Eskimoso]

Q-you-in

[@jase6709]

Cue-ee-ooh-ee-ing

[@dillarddillard-p4e]

😂

[@muk2167]

And I was hoping "yacht" ⛵

[@joseandnatashabetancor-leo7048]

He outdid himself with this one. As a retired ESL teacher living in Spain I literally ache from laughing (and you can only imagine how I pronounced that!

[@edibleelegancecakestudio]

😂😂😂😂

[@javiersds8081]

Silent Letter Day actually sounds like a fun idea.

[@marioluigi9599]

He got gnome wrong. Forgot to pronounce the e at the end.

[@lenagreen4031]

I have always said that he is a genius, his obverency of culture, language, body language etc! Etc! Is second to none. He was never a flash in the pan! Too much talent running through his veins. May be continue for another 25, brilliant years of entertaining us. X

[@oliverraven]

Observation skills 10/10 Intellectual curiosity after a quarter of a century? Still 0/10 Wouldn't take much research to find out the origin of all those letters and then make a routine of *that* instead.

[@IngleseconAnna]

I'm an English teacher here in Italy. I love the idea of throwing a silent day party with my students🤣🤣🤣🤣 . Also, the writing for this is top-notch intelligence.

[@maudeboggins9834]

Once in English is 11 in Spanish & each letter is pronounced

[@IngleseconAnna]

@@maudeboggins9834 it's even worse in Italian. All the double letters are pronounced 🙊

[@maudeboggins9834]

@@IngleseconAnna True. Spanish is the easiest of all. What you read is pronounced exactly. Oh yes apart from the double "LL" oh well nearly though.

[@a6517]

Might actually help to remember words with silent letters to be honest!

[@eurekacomment5719]

Arabic is one of the easiest languages to learn how to read! Very few silent letters and each letter has marks on it to make it easy to know how to pronounce each letter. 4 year olds can easily learn how to read Arabic and they can easily get 95% of the words correct!

[@imadmatar6941]

If you think english has silent letters check out the french language where sometimes half of a word could be silent

[@origamichik3n]

Loic Suberville has a very helpful selection of short videos to help you in that quest.

[@jayhill2193]

is it Bordo wine, Bordau wine? No it‘s Bordeaux wine, naturally!

[@kdemetter]

True, but at least it's more consistent. And they have special characters to help indicate how you should pronounce it.

[@kdemetter]

@@origamichik3n He's awesome !

[@Sam-ep7sc]

Indeed. If this word existed: “aingtx”, the French would pronounce it “an”.

[@lisaberry862]

My father hated silent letters, too! He always referred to a knife as a "k-niff-ee.

[@JonatasAdoM]

The Suuord one hurts because so many people do it. I mean, how'd you even know. Now learning that Knife's plural is knives is something else.

[@Tvaikah]

@@JonatasAdoM 'Swords' was originally pronounced with an audible W, to be fair.

[@Dave1507]

@@Tvaikah That could be of germanic origin, because in german it's "Schwert".

[@miamijim5964]

I live in Finland where a Knife is always a K-nif-ee.

[@StudioTinidril]

He's a non-piano playing Victor Borge! 🤣 Wonderful!

[@heatherlewis3713]

This was so funny. My Depression has been really bad this week, but this made me laugh.

[@lizsteele8858]

Keep going. Laughter is definitely one of the best tools to help that.🙂

[@arushigupta1454]

take care :)

[@heatherlewis3713]

@lizsteele8858 Thankyou. I'm from Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺. I've had Chronic Depression since 8 years of age. But as I got older & the Medication wasn't really doing much, the Diagnosis was amended. So my actual Diagnosis is - Medication Resistant Chronic Depression. I also have Anxiety & Mild OCD.

[@simonmackenzie6230]

Hello from Sydney. Keep trying! It took me over 25 years to find a medication that really worked for me. Many did nothing, some were just ok, some started well and lost effectiveness. Make sure your specialist tries different drug types, SSRI, SNRI, tricyclic, MAOI, etc. For me I needed both serotonergic and noradrenergic action. Don't give up! (Apologies if I'm repeating stuff you already know and have tried - I've just found most psychiatrists very sub-par; I often wondered on what side of the desk I should be sitting!) All the best. Keep laughing.

[@justincase7848]

For some reason there are a plethora of subpar psychiatrists. I often wonder if it's because their patients don't have the resources to sue.

[@darcyperkins7041]

I've known non-native speakers who actually do pronounce the "p" in "receipt", the "w" in "sword", and the "w" in "answer".

[@kartikpandey1353]

I pronounce the w in sword

[@JV-ll1cu]

I'm non-native speaker and would pronounce those words like you described

[@tabby73]

My Indian friend always says Wed-nesday 😅

[@jadon_dg]

@@kartikpandey1353So you pronounce sword ‘s-w-ord’ as opposed to ‘sord’?

[@kartikpandey1353]

@tabby73 lol... I am an Indian, and we really do do that

[@jontybelmont3384]

I bet silent letter day hits different in Ireland. With Siabhon, Eilidh, etc

[@simonrobbins8357]

Did you mean Siobhan? Never heard of Siabhon.

[@lordprotector3367]

I used to think Eilidh was pronounced 'eyelid'. :)

[@davidchambers7508]

Silent letters in Irish are somewhat different. The “h” following a consonant softens this. The consonant combination in English “ph” pronounced as “f” is example of this consonant softening.

[@jontybelmont3384]

Possibly, my bad :)

[@stormveil]

technically those are digraphs in Siobhan. si is sh. bh is v. Like sh in shall goes together. Irish just has a different spelling system than English.

[@jamiewillis5690]

Michael is a national treasure 😂😂😂😂😂

[@jamespotter3660]

Fool's gold more like.

[@colinjames2469]

Mic ha el !

[@lizsteele8858]

This was great. Good old Michael Mac...putting a smile on my face & highlighting our silly language.🤭 It also reminds me of his Spices in the cupboard sketch. A favourite of mine.👍🏻😁

[@skeptic1124]

That is what i like about croatian and other slavic languages, everything is spelled exactly as it is spoken, with a very few exceptions. When someone says their name, you immediately know how to spell it, even if you are 7 years old. Sometimes when i see some english, german and french words spelled out, i get dizzy. Peugeot or bordeaux are my favorites. Just use the letter o at the end and scratch those extra letters damn it🙃

[@Born.Toulouse]

We Germans are actually proud of the fact that our spelling is pretty much straightforward and close to the pronunciation. Just opposed to English and French. Are we wrong about that??

[@MarkusWitthaut]

@@Born.Toulouse Even though German is much more regular than English when it comes to pronunciation, it is far from regular. The ch in ich and auch are two different sounds. A d, g or b is pronounced as t, k (sometimes the ich-ch sound) or p when this sound is at the end of a word stem. Think about Hand and Hände, grob and gröber or König und Könige. And their many more examples. The biggest problem is, that we use an alphabet that was designed for Latin. There are patterns you have to learn so you know how to change the pronunciation when you decline or conjugate a know.

[@sheilaboston7051]

East Timor (Timor-Leste) has many dialects but their written forms are a fairly recent introduction. Because there are no roots to other languages, each word is written exactly as it sounds, with just a few exceptions. Makes it easy to read and speak, but there's very little grammar or tenses, which makes construction hard. e.g. I go = hau ba, he/she goes = nia ba, horeseik hau ba = yesterday I go, i.e. I went! Hence, they find English very hard.

[@MagycArwen]

I'm italian and it's the same in our language! No one needs to spell check 😂

[@skeptic1124]

​@@Born.Toulouse it is certainly better than english, but some people have their name spelled Müller and some have it spelled Mueller. Sometimes the letter c is pronounced like a k, sometimes like a c. Sometimes the letter s is pronounced like an s, sometimes like a z. And these compound words can get so long, they make me want to use decimal points in words 😁 i also still have problems with numbers being pronounced backwards, despite speaking german for 30 years. If someone says 36, 24, 86, 29 really fast, i get stunned. 🙃 I have to reverse engineer it in my head in order to get it right.

[@eigonojikan_k]

3:13 Stanley Tucci!

[@Wimpoman]

Or Mark Strong? XD

[@Enivri]

Yep and 3:50 is Michael Sheen and Anton Du Beke

[@Anonymous2306]

I was wondering if it is really him!

[@resolecca]

​@@Anonymous2306it is really him he lives in the uk

[@maxm2574]

Some of you don't know the name but that's that guy from The Hunger Games

[@MsArdi-wi8hy]

Just finished teaching a unit about the spread of languages and this is amazing. May share it with my students. :)

[@aliia_linguacosmos]

Elementary English learners start talking that way with the silent letters 😂 So at first I hear that kind of talk a lot 😅

[@robobunny4641]

The legendary missing episode of 'Allo 'Allo! Brilliant 😂

[@LovelyPerson-w1c]

When he said, " You should have known," pronouncing the silent letters, I laughed out loud! 😂

[@ryasmi]

I think Silent Letter Day should be Wednesday 29th February - the only day that's silent for 3 years

[@Krzykophil]

See you in 2040

[@paulxaphier5488]

I love this man and Lee Evans, but what makes Michael McIntyre that extra special is that I’ve never heard him swear or be dirty. The odd explicit joke here and there but nothing you can’t watch in front of family. That’s why this guy is a LEGEND, full stop.

[@Nikodymus]

😂😂😂 English is a language comprised of 3 other languages and a dead one. Imagine 3 old guys and a corpse shambling around on top of each other’s shoulders in a trench coat. That’s the English language.

[@jmacjewels5780]

This was brilliant! Like when he did the joke about names with different spellings 😂

[@lizsteele8858]

...and one of my favourites...the Spices/ Herbs in the cupboard. If you haven't seen it, worth checking out.🙂

[@jmacjewels5780]

@lizsteele8858 I’ve watched that it’s funny!

[@MaiElizabeth]

I spilled my coffee when he said KNIFE

[@saviom8166]

0:26 you obviously haven't been to India.

[@nanit06]

😂

[@WindYaNeckIn]

That was a 2 Ronnie's calibre performance. Well done Michael for nailing it. 😂

[@TomAnderson7]

As a kid when studied English in school I used to pronounce all the silent letter. I always was corrected by my teacher, but it was very confusing lol

[@anigrig1719]

You are laughing at this, but this is exactly how Finnish people speak English - spelling each letter in the word 😂😂😂

[@_Caoran_]

Finns are so silent that we don't need silent letters :)

[@eugenefindit]

I've watched this segment probably about 10 times at this point and I still end up laughing. The strength of Michael McIntyre's comedy is the fact that he puts all of our random everyday thoughts into words, so you can't help but laugh at how relatable everything is. This guy's still got it even after so many years. 😁

[@keithleivers4061]

What a wordsmith he should do a full story

[@olessyayurchenko8763]

I feel a lot of pain in my cheeks thanks to severe laughting😂😂😂

[@maudeboggins9834]

Me too, I was actually laughing quite high pitched I think my son thought I was in pain. Only pain from laughter fortunately.

[@paddotk]

I honestly think having a 'silent letter day' is a good idea. Just for the fun and ridiculousness of it.

[@cherrytate7149]

😂😂😂😂Thank you so much I havent laughed SO much in YEARS ❤❤❤❤❤🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@deantodd8103]

Ismo Leikola already did a whole bit about silent letters.

[@mandawood9756]

I’d love to hear him try this skit with Cajun English. Or southern English. It would be even funnier to watch him try. I don’t know how he managed to not only remember the joke but not miss a single word. Amazing.

[@raphaelhudson]

we have been pronouncing these words like this for funsies for actual generations in my family

[@paulagaub9871]

Oh this is so funny ,he is wonderful how he comes up with them😂

[@t0bywebster]

3:50 Anton du Beke!

[@The10thDoctorForever]

And Michael Sheen!

[@sharmaji.ki.beti.]

And Stanley Tucci before that 3:12

[@nathanmcgill7249]

Pronounced 'doo beck-AY'

[@arwena102]

The pain of everyone who's learning English as a second language. I definitely pronounced all these silent letters at some point of the journey. I might occassionally still pronounce them if it's a word I haven't heard in a long time. And then I'll probably instantly think of this video :D

[@dcworld1076]

My name's Geoffrey and why wasn't i invited to silent letter day

[@maja-kehn9130]

This NEEDS to be an official holiday! We should start a petition. 😆🤣

[@wendyc3833]

I used to give my American friends stick for not pronouncing the h in herbs until they pointed out to me that we don't say he's ''hair' (heir) to the throne and the h in honest is silent. We just chose to leave the h in herbs. :)

[@WideCuriosity]

You might not. Some of us do.

[@LovelyPerson-w1c]

I like him. He's funny. This is really intelligent comedy. ❤

[@apetass123]

Silent letters can be a bit of a (Ed) gamble sometimes as a non-native, but words like ”insatiable” (British city names are boss level, but I rarely have to say those out loud) might be the trickiest for me as a Swede. We got silent letters in Swedish as well, though. I love Spanish orthography because it’s mostly intuitive (taking regional accents/dialects into consideration).

[@berserkirclaws107]

I'm French and this is so fun to me!

[@maudeboggins9834]

Champagne. Chateau, Gateaux, Versailles.

[@berserkirclaws107]

@maudeboggins9834 🤣👍

[@MyelinProductions]

THANK YOU!!! LOVE IT! WOW! Thought sooooo many times - thanks for saying it! FUNNY! ~ Be Safe out here folks ~ Peace & Health to US All.

[@alina9875]

Grateful for this stand up, Now, you would understand my accent better 😅

[@lovelywaz]

Monty Python told us that years ago, you English Knights... 😆😆😆😆

[@АмирАлибекулы-м6ф]

He sounded exactly like me when I was a kid memorizing English words in school. Our English teacher used to make us translate and write memorized English words in a ‘quiz’, so to succeed, I did it just the way he does here. It was so hilarious 😂

[@almalouw7007]

Michael is funny as hell!!!! ❤❤

[@LordCLecter]

What an authentic german accent... 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪

[@nazirkhalifa5377]

Salute our English teachers.😅😅😅

[@chrissihr1031]

Surprised how very German he sounds pronouncing every letter. 😂 Why didn’t he pronounce the ‘e’ at the end of ‘knife’ and ‘gnome’, though?

[@sharmaji.ki.beti.]

Because the e's are actually not "silent" silent. They take part in the pronunciation. If you had knif you would pronounce it as "nif" not "na-if". So the e lends to the "ai" sound. Same with gnome. If it was just gnom...it would be "nawm" e.g. ton vs tone. I feel the same about the w in wrap. I think its not totally silent. You roll your tongue on the "wr". Rap n wrap are slightly different. So are rite and write. There are exceptions though

[@la-go-xy]

Todays German pronounciation (IPA): kneifen [ˈknaɪ̯fn̩] -- to pinch, to tweak Kneifzange [ˈknaɪ̯ft͡saŋə] -- pliers, pair of nippers, pincers Gnom [ɡnoːm] (pl.) Gnome [ˈɡnoːmə] But the German vowel shift is sth. so. else has to explain ;-)

[@limeyUK99]

Well, if you think about it, it's not that surprising. English derives from Dutch which derives from German. Obviously English picked up other languages on the way, though.

[@frankhooper7871]

@@limeyUK99 English doesn't derive from Dutch, nor does Dutch derive from German; all three languages derive from a common ancestor. You don't descend from your cousins or your siblings.

[@la-go-xy]

@@frankhooper7871 Angelns, (lower) Saxons, Frisians + Jutes, Norse... were Germanic migrants who merged their languages into English at their time.

[@KathyB-ko7gs]

Totally sent me into a joyous laughing spell. 😂 Brilliant, Michael, absolutely brilliant!

[@Alcagaur1]

"I was destined for another word" rather beautifully summarises the schism betwixt sound and spelling in English.

[@AndyContento-q8v]

Michael is simply hilarious!!!👍👍👍👌👌👌😁😁😁🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@theoutspokenhumanist]

Yes, we all know there are reasons for the silent letters but who cares when Mr McIntyre can be so hilarious without the need to swear or shock?

[@itsacarolbthing5221]

Word play is what Michael excels at.

[@Joyce-t2f]

Bravo!! This was brillant, thank you.

[@Alinor24]

That's the most hilarious thing ever. We should make it a real Holiday.

[@peterfedun-sk3jt]

I work with many people from around the world who speak English as a second language and spend quite a bit of time trying to explain the why of English spelling.

[@LINKr2]

This is how Spanish speakers see English 😂

[@Ibasirov]

Jokes aside, that is almost exactly how I used to pronounce English words in my head, when I was making my first steps learning it, the only difference - I read all syllables the way they would be pronounced in my native language. Moreover I remember my fellow-pupils doing that too (beautiful, bicycle and language were among our favourites). And even more than that - I still do that, when I struggle with some words like, say, consciousness, bureaucracy etc.

[@stephencamplin-d8h]

I’m surprised that no-one mentioned the word “Queue…” - only one letter pronounced, followed by four silent ones - should be “Q ueee ueee…” 🤔

[@ashj1979]

The last four letters are well…queuing

[@justincase7848]

He is an uber professional- his delivery is absolutely on target every time.

[@jessejohanni]

MM: Nobody has ever said "I see you in a Hour"! Björk: Hold my dried cod.

[@arkashyap]

He just sounds Indian. British colonised India and forgot to tell us which letters are silent.

[@kerim.peardon5551]

When I went to Ireland for the first time, I told the bus driver what "kway" I needed to be dropped at in Dublin. It took him a while to figure out I was talking about a "key." When I returned to America some months later, I found out that the American pronunciation of "quay" is indeed "kway." So, I didn't pronounce it incorrectly, they just use a different pronunciation in Ireland. You know, the one where all the letters present are silent.

[@SuStel]

I have trouble enjoying bits like this because I DO know why these silent letters exist, and it does make sense.

[@evaborho2554]

Sounds like you could make your own KZbin video about it! ❤🎉

[@la-go-xy]

It's surprisingly interesting to dig into history: connectedness of migration, languages and society. Makes it more real than learning some numbers at school. Only discovered that recently on YT...

[@zandrat8470]

Just discovered this guy - hilarious !!!!

[@zahifar3936]

Letters that have been hidden because they sound awkward when pronounced as Michael McIntyre has demonstrated! But words spelled like that because they originally come from other languages with a similar spelling. Speaking of Michael, it’s spelled like that because it’s pronounced micha-el in another language. The ch making the same sound as in the Spanish J.

[@hsmmadmunir]

Absolutely loved it

[@joeayim3568]

Apart from a few extreme cases that's how we generally speak English in Nigeria.

[@amandanunez2437]

I laughed WAYYYY too hard at this!!

[@MSGtJimator]

This is how Czech people sound, when we start learning English

[@denisela105]

As a non-native speaker, I just realised I'm pronouncing a few of these the words exactly as Michael jokingly pronounces and people find hilarious 🤭😂

[@samanthaesra4035]

Hes so clever to come up with this stuff. And all clean humor too.

[@anastasiabeaverhausen8220]

That was wonderful. As fine as the sort of punctuation lesson the great Victor Borge was known (or ka-nown) for. I'm in the U.S. and have never seen this chap before. Superb bit.

[@abistarr2379]

This was so funny 😂

[@songbirdjess854]

This is how I failed at English he had me laughing so hard he's hilarious thank you for this

[@IntrepidFraidyCat]

He forgot the tortillas!

[@Amperzand]

Really?!! Oh no... I've been saying it wrong!

[@JonatasAdoM]

That's how you say it in another language actually.

[@JonatasAdoM]

​@@Amperzand These comedy videos turn into hidden lessons sometimes.

[@Tvaikah]

@@Amperzand It's fine if you're British. They mispronounce all the foreign words. Tortilla, paella...

[@MrDaeltaja]

Bloody hilarious 🤣

[@Chris_Cracknell-vm4jr]

Very clever.. very well done.

[@pumagutten]

This was glourious.😂

[@sidneyrocks777]

Brilliant!!! 😂👍👍👍

[@dorota9931]

.... still laughing ... larfing ....😂

[@hotdog1214]

It seems my family are already in silent letter day they quite often say k-niff, las-ag-nee, skissors and cham-pag-a-nay. Love the idea of everyone having to do it for a whole day though, that's hilarious! 😂😂

[@LuisferRomeroCalero]

All Spanish people say 'Wed-NES-day' in school until we learn the strange ellipsis.

[@eF_cz]

So native english speakers do notice those letters there...interesting.

[@GoodKingMort]

So good to see him do standup again.

[@ProsecutorZekrom]

The way I read words in my head to make sure I can spell them

[@Joy-z6g]

I like silent letters. I can’t imagine a world where we spell words as they are spoken: suttle, sord, det, etc.

[@NRoss-ep6ow]

Pinched from Eddie Izzard but very funny none the less!