Pronunciation: silent ‘e’
Elementary to Intermediate (A1-B1)

English pronunciation has changed over hundreds of years. Today you will often see a silent letter ‘e’ at the end of words. This ‘e’ often shows that the vowel sound in the syllable before it is long.

The long sound is either a single sound or a sound that changes (glides). We call the sounds that glide ‘diphthongs’. For example the vowel sound in ‘boy‘ is a diphthong. Try saying ‘boy’ or ‘toy’ or ‘soy’. These sounds are very important in modern English.

Let’s look at some examples of silent ‘e’:

note   hate   site   tune  gene

Remember, in the words above, the final ‘e’ is not pronounced but it helps us work out the pronunciation of the word.

The silent ‘e’ usually changes the vowel sound in the middle of the word. This vowel sound is like the name of the letter in the alphabet (a, e, i, o, u). Apart from ‘i’ and ‘u’, these sounds are diphthongs.

‘a’ as in ate
‘e’ as in feet
‘i’ as in ice
‘o’ as in no
‘u’ as in new

Try saying these pairs of words:

not – note
hat- hate
sit – site
tun – tune
pet – Pete (the name)

Here are some more to practise:

con – cone
cod – code
tat – tate (as in the Tate gallery in London)
Al (the name) – ale
can – cane
pan – pane
pin – pine
grip – gripe
run – rune
dud – dude

As mentioned above, this does not happen with all words such as:
come (but it does in ‘cone’)
love (but it does in ‘cove’)