Games, March 2006, Pg 35

January 8, 2006 7:32 PM

Are there any common english words with a silent letter F, J, Q or V?
posted by yeoz to Writing & Language (40 answers total)

Tijuana?
posted by interrobang at 7:36 PM on January 8, 2006

Marijuana?
posted by interrobang at 7:36 PM on January 8, 2006

Junta?
posted by greatgefilte at 7:37 PM on January 8, 2006

Marijuana.
posted by Dunwitty at 7:37 PM on January 8, 2006

... frickin' preview.
posted by Dunwitty at 7:38 PM on January 8, 2006

Found some answers in this old usenet thread.

F: halFpenny
J: mariJuana
Q: colQuhoun
V: fiVepenny

There may still be better answers than these, though.
posted by IvyMike at 7:39 PM on January 8, 2006

Maybe they're aiming for double-letter combinations, where one of the letters is somewhat 'silent'?

e.g. hajj, off, skivvies
posted by greatgefilte at 7:39 PM on January 8, 2006

Is the j really silent in those words, or is "ju" used to signify a "w" sound? In Spanish, the j would be similar to an h.
posted by grumblebee at 7:40 PM on January 8, 2006

and this post: http://volokh.com/posts/1074095654.shtml
posted by Dunwitty at 7:41 PM on January 8, 2006

Marijuana, hajj and tijuana aren't English though. And I pronounce the F in Halfpenny and the V in fivepenny, I think that's more of an accent thing than the way they're suposed to be pronounced.
posted by fshgrl at 7:42 PM on January 8, 2006

I would argue that "Marijuana" IS english. It comes from Spanish, but it's very common English usage.
posted by grumblebee at 7:44 PM on January 8, 2006

grumblebee is right about the "h" sound. It's not silent, it's just not the typical English "j" pronunication.
posted by sellout at 7:46 PM on January 8, 2006

Banff. Everyone except Peter Sellers pronounces only one "f".
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 7:54 PM on January 8, 2006

halFpenny?

Nah, it's pronounced 'harfpenni', so the silent letter there is the 'L'. However, ha'penny, an alternete spelling, does have a missing couple of letters - which is why they ain't pronounced.

I would also say that the examples with 'J' - marijuana, etc. - are spanish. But then 'yacht' is Dutch, and it has a silent 'C' & silent 'H'.

Ho hum. Off to bed.
posted by dash_slot- at 7:56 PM on January 8, 2006

In Spanish it's Marihuana, so 'Marijuana' is actually the English spelling.
posted by signal at 7:59 PM on January 8, 2006

Best answer: From Crazy English, by Richard Lederer:

F: halfpenny
J: rijsttafel
Q: racquet
V: flivver, savvy

He has at least one example for each letter of the alphabet. Of course "halfpenny" has already been mentioned; I've never seen nor heard "rijsttafel" outside of this context; and "flivver" and "savvy" are (as greatgefilte mentioned) just doubled consonants - the argument is that only one is pronounced. I'll credit "racquet" but the others seem like a stretch to me.
posted by attercoppe at 8:04 PM on January 8, 2006

My mum who grew up in England pronounced halfpenny as "hay-penny", as did everyone she knew. It doesn't have to be modified to ha'penny to be pronounced that way.
posted by teem at 8:25 PM on January 8, 2006

"rijsttafel" is a dutch word (which in turn describes rice dishes adopted from indonesia).
posted by randomstriker at 9:53 PM on January 8, 2006

J: rijsttafel

"rijsttafel" is an English word????

(on preview: what randomstriker said, but I am more longwinded)

It's Dutch, it means "a meal with rice" (rijst= rice, tafel=table) and "ij" is considered one vowel. It's like a y with dots rather than a separate i and j. But if it is also used in English, then I'd say that, yes, the j is silent. It would make more sense to spell it rysttafel, though. In other words originating from Dutch (bowery) the ij changed to a y.
posted by easternblot at 9:54 PM on January 8, 2006

There's no way the 'j' in marijuana can be considered silent.
posted by mediareport at 10:04 PM on January 8, 2006

Best answer: why not?

If people pronounced it 'mari-hoo-ana' I'd agree but I've always heard it pronounced as 'mari-wana' in which case the w sound is taken up by the u.

A quick consult of an online dictionary (m-w.com) and they give two alternate pronunciations - one with the explicit h ('hwa-na') and without ('wa-na')
posted by vacapinta at 10:12 PM on January 8, 2006

Fjord?
posted by The White Hat at 10:18 PM on January 8, 2006

why not?

Pronounce "mariuana."

Or, for that matter, "racuet."
posted by mediareport at 10:29 PM on January 8, 2006

Best answer: mediareport: q is always followed by a u in English, so technically you should be asking them to pronounce racet. Now, because in the actual spelling there is no e following the c (and thus we have a hard c sound) you should be asking them to pronounce raket.

Which, hey, sounds exactly like racquet. That's the only I've seen here that I can't find any objection to.
posted by Ryvar at 10:45 PM on January 8, 2006

q is always followed by a u in English

Which means calling the "q" itself silent is ridiculous.

Now, because in the actual spelling there is no e following the c (and thus we have a hard c sound) you should be asking them to pronounce raket.

Nice fudge, but if the point is to focus on friggin *letters* instead of sounds, you can't change the rules in the middle of the game. So, go ahead and pronounce "racet."
posted by mediareport at 11:19 PM on January 8, 2006

fnord?
posted by slogger at 11:32 PM on January 8, 2006

why not?

Pronounce "mariuana."

I'm taking a silent letter as one which is not expressed in pronunciation not one which, by omission, changes the pronunciation.

For example, the 'b' in climb is generally acknowledged to be silent but if you remove it you get 'clim' which people would then pronounce with a short vowel.
posted by vacapinta at 12:00 AM on January 9, 2006

Actually, I pronounce clime and climb differently... While the "b" isn't (in effect) another syllable, it dictates the position of the tongue when finishing the "m" - back for "clime" and forward for "climb".
posted by benzo8 at 2:30 AM on January 9, 2006

My mum who grew up in England pronounced halfpenny as "hay-penny", as did everyone she knew. It doesn't have to be modified to ha'penny to be pronounced that way.

But in Ireland, it generally is. The Liffey Bridge in the center of Dublin is better known by its colloquial name, the Ha'penny Bridge.

On the other hand, I know a guy in Canada who's surname is Halpenny. So it probably depends on location.
posted by macdara at 5:12 AM on January 9, 2006

Seeing as we're doing place names, there is always Milngavie, just outside Glasgow, Scotland.

It's pronounced (honestly) Mill-Guy, so I guess that's your silent V just there.
posted by bouncebounce at 7:06 AM on January 9, 2006

My Spanish teacher from Costa Rica (and many Spanish speakers from South and Central America) pronounced "j" as the hard j sound we are used to in English. So the "j" in marijuana was not silent using her pronunciation.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 7:13 AM on January 9, 2006

Best answer: I would also say that the examples with 'J' - marijuana, etc. - are spanish. But then 'yacht' is Dutch, and it has a silent 'C' & silent 'H'.

This is bizarre. Marijuana and yacht are as English as any other words; look them up in a dictionary and see. If you're not going to count loan words as English, you'll have a very small vocabulary. (For instance, most of the words in this comment would be gone.)

Actually, I pronounce clime and climb differently

I seriously doubt it. I'll bet if someone played you a tape recording of yourself pronouncing both words several times in random order, you couldn't tell which was which. People often think they pronounce things differently because they have different mental images of them due to the spelling.

And yes, rijstaffel is an English word; it's just not a very common one, and many of you don't happen to know it. That's fine, but the English vocabulary isn't coextensive with yours. Check Webster's Collegiate, Eleventh Edition, page 1074. I've used it quite a few times in ordinary conversation ("I wish there were a place in Manhattan where I could get good rijstaffel").
posted by languagehat at 7:20 AM on January 9, 2006

I'm taking a silent letter as one which is not expressed in pronunciation not one which, by omission, changes the pronunciation.

Fair enough. I'll retract the statement about marijuana, assuming there's no "h" sound in the way you pronounce it. I almost always hear it with the more Spanish pronunciation, though.
posted by mediareport at 9:54 AM on January 9, 2006

It's thirty seven years since the halfpenny went to its just reward a couple of years before the introduction of decimalized New Pence, but when i was a nipper I never heard it pronounced as anything other than "ha'p'ny" -- similarly constant use wore threepence to "thrup'nce". It was sometimes written as ha'penny, but I think that was just done by the same sort of people who insist on writing boatswain as "bosun" and gunwale as "gunnel" because "that's how they sound."
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 11:02 AM on January 9, 2006

Taking into account dash_slot's point about dropped haiches earlier in the thread (or possibly "fred") anything other than "ha'p'ny" should be emended to include "a'p'ny".
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 11:16 AM on January 9, 2006

languagehat:
I wasn't saying that we should discount 'yacht' due to it's origins in Dutch. Of course, I do accept it as an english word - as it has been for centuries. I agree that English would not only be poorer without it's many loan words. I was making a very small side point, in truth.

I don't see marijuana as English, mainly because in the UK we rarely use that word. We usually say grass, dope, weed or skunk. Or other alternatives - marijuana is still an exotic term, and my weed smoking clients would think I was very poncey to say that. So maybe that is just a small example of our nations being divided by ... oh, you know the rest.

Halfpennies, by the way, existed after 1971 as a half penny in decimal coinage: 1/200th of a pound, as opposed to 1/480th of a pound. It was finally abolished in 1984. They were always pronounced hayp'nies/hayp'ny, and usually written ha'pennies/ha'penny.
posted by dash_slot- at 12:51 PM on January 9, 2006

Halfpennies, by the way, existed after 1971... but I never heard them called anything but a "half p". To reinforce this distinction the wording on the coins themselves was "Half Penny" for the old coin and "½ New Penny" for the new.

If it had circulated for more than a dozen years the new coin might eventually have become a "halfpenny" in common parlance, but my experience was that it never did.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 2:10 PM on January 9, 2006

"½ New Penny" is, of course, "½ New Penny" (it looks fine in live preview then gets garbled on posting, strange)
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 2:13 PM on January 9, 2006

½ New Penny was indeed known as ½p - I'd forgotten that! I was referring to pre-decimal, and retract that comment. To clarify - I am old enough to remember when my stepdad brought home a 50p coin, in 1969 - ar least 1 year, perhaps more, prior to the introduction of the full range of decimal coinage. For a while, the old 'ten bob notes' (worth 10/- [10 shillings, or half a pound sterling]) equivalent to the 7 sided 50p coins, circulated at the same time.
posted by dash_slot- at 2:19 PM on January 9, 2006

Bugger.
posted by dash_slot- at 2:20 PM on January 9, 2006