In english(and other languages) there exist the phenomenon of "silent letters", such as pterodactyl, phlegm, raspberry and asthma (which loses two!). This is known as an aphthong(or so I recently found out, after a bit of research), and I was wondering if there was an opposite to it - like a letter that doesn't exist, but is pronounced! Does this exist? Does it have a name?

al

Welcome applejuice,

I don't know if there is a name for it, but the situation does exist.

Take, for example, the word TUESDAY, in some parts of the U.S. Tuesday is pronounced Chews-day. The CH is definitely not there, but it is pronounced.

Oh, and as an aside, the way I hear it, the P in raspberry is pronounce; lightly, but pronounced nonetheless. Maybe it's a regional thing.

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And then there's this whole thing with COLONEL being pronounced KERNAL [shrugging-shoulders e]

I don't know a name either, however, in Fijiian the 'Q' is pronounced 'ng' as in sing. and the 'C' is pronounced 'th'.
Not english but!

There is a phenomenon called epenthesis where a sound, usually vocalic, is inserted between other sounds, usually consonantal, to help out in pronunciation (or phonotactics). You hear it in some pronunciations of realty (reeluhtee) and nuclear (nookooler).

The reason English has so many silent letters is because our orthography (spelling system) went out of whack with how words were being pronounced about 600 years ago but we never released new versions.

CHewsday? I ain't never heard that.

and there ain't no p in raspberry. regional, I suppose. nice hefty Z, though.

Is there Two D's in satday'?

Come up here (it's chewsday today), and not only will you hear it, we'll even draw you a pitcha.

there are, many, many words (regionally, in NYC/metro area, and esle where) that get r's dropped (like max's example of draw you a pitcha. -(max is far, far from NYC!)

there are just as many words that get R's added.
can i think of an example? no of course not..
well maybe.. there is a road in the bronx, Mosholu Parkway, that is Marsha loo (and alternately, ma Shula Parkway, but never Mosholu!)

there are lots of others, but unless i make an effort, i don't hear the R--it just sounds normal to me!

R's get added to english word here in NYC and elsewhere.

Mebbe Max would drawr us a pitcha.

"Warsh" for "wash" is the first example that comes to my mind. Then there's the British pronunciation of "lieutenant," which has always boggled my mind. (Although I can't justify the "r" sound in "colonel" myself.)

middle-of-the-word t-to-ch I'm familiar with, just not this beginning-of-the-word stuff.

Tuesday being pronounced chewsday illustrates one outcome of a process called palatalization. The segment "tu" being pronounced /tju/; it's a short hop, skip, and jump to /tʃu/. This sort of thing happened a lot in Romance languages: Latin "c", pronounced /k/, becomes "ch", /ʃ/, in some environments in French. Think of how "c" is pronounced in Italian before "a", "o", and "u", differently than before "e", "i": /k/ ~ /tʃ/. Another example is how Latin diurnus became French jour and Italian giorno: /dju/ => /dʒo/.

The US pronunciation of the "t" in Saturday is not actually a voiced alveolar stop /d/, but people hear it that way usually. It's rather an alveolar tap: [ɾ]. The process is sometimes called flapping. It is not a phoneme in English, but an allophone. It is the same as Spanish "r" intervocalically, as in pero 'but'.

I was thinking about this, and one that I can think of that is related to the t-ch thing is, "what you" being said (or sung) as "whatchoo".

Good examples.
I guess the English cannot easily pronounce the French "lieu"
The 'eu ' sound is not really there. You pronounce it as 'you'.
Should it have been : 'Liyoutenant'? Difficult too.

Of course the English reserve the right to deliberately mangle any French word as they see fit, and if it annoys the French then so much the better.

The 'eu ' sound is not really there. You pronounce it as 'you'.

Most, if not all, languages replace foreign phonemes in loanwords with phonemes from their inventory. It's normal. The French do it, too. Cf. the pronunciation of French smoking 'dinner jacket'.

reeluhtee?? Remind me where you're from zmjezhd.

"British pronunciation of "lieutenant," which has always boggled my mind. "
Were you referring to leftenant rather than lootenant?

>leftenant

there's some folksy etymology goin' on here:

In English the word is pronounced /lɛf'tɛnənt/,[1] except in American English in which it is pronounced /lu'tɛnənt/. However, the Royal Navy and other Commonwealth navies traditionally pronounced the word as /lə'tɛnənt/. The American pronunciation was originally the same as the British,[2] but by the end of the 19th century had almost completely been replaced by the current pronunciation.

In Canada and New Zealand /lɛf'tɛnənt/ is standard for all branches of the Armed Forces and for other usages such as lieutenant governor or Quebec lieutenant. Australia follows the British system, with the Royal Australian Navy officially using the /lə'tɛnənt/ pronunciation.

The English pronunciation was prevalent during the 14th and 15th centuries with the word being variously spelled as lieftenant, lyeftenant or luftenant. It may have originated from a mistaken reading of the 'u' as a 'v' (u and v originally were written as the same letter), with v eventually assimilating in voice to /f/. Something similar happened in Greek, and British education on the Greek classics may have also encouraged the pronunciation. Some sources state that the original French word lieu (i.e. "place", since "lieu tenant" literally means "place holder" in old French) had an alternative form spelt and pronounced lieuf, and that the most common modern form retains the former spelling 'Lieutenant' and the latter pronunciation, 'Leftenant'.

It has also been speculated that it may have come from a fanciful etymology which associated it with the verb 'to leave', as the lieutenant only took up his duties once his superior officer had 'left'.

Another theory comes from the fact that in typical propriety the person or persons standing to the rear-left of a gentleman held power and were typically those directly second to him. The person or persons standing to the rear-right were considered to have no or less standing than those to the rear-left, such as aides, bodyguards, wives, etc., often holding this position for simple facility rather than societal importance. This tradition remains in military parades, with lieutenants standing to the rear-left of the commanding officer (when facing the advance). - wiki

reeluhtee?? Remind me where you're from zmjezhd

I'm from Sonoma County, California. I say "reeltee", but I've heard "reeluhtee" from any number of US English speakers. For the record, I don't say "nookooler" either.

So you have your leftenant and your rightenant?

I had a dear friend (from New Jersey) who would often have a great "idear".

How many silent letters in "apophthegm"—the Brit. spelling of "apothegm"?

the 'ph' of the variant, plus the 'g'.

-joe (apophthegmatically speaking) friday

Hi Applejuice!
In my mother tongue - Malayalam, a Dravidian language - there exists a common phenomenon whereby many words spelt without the letter /e/ are pronounced with the sound[e]. This seems to be the opposite of the 'aphthongal'situation. Can they be called 'ephthongs' after the Malayalam [e]?

Welcome vettakode. Always good to have another non-native English speaker. I believe the general term for what you describe is epenthesis.