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You know what this is, right? It's a door. You can say door. So why do you do something strange with this word: daughter? The GH is completely silent. It's basically the word door and the sound /t/ daughter. I mean, didn't you know that when we have a vowel sound in English followed by GH, the GH is silent unless it uses the /f/ sound, like cough and rough. Yes, in all other situations, the GH is silent. Like, daughter, caught, thought, bought, taught, high, night, thigh, through, thorough. Did you hear me pronounce the GH in any of those words? It's a great pronunciation rule that I want you to learn. And I've got so many more silent letter rules for you inside this lesson. So let's go!

OK, this is a British English pronunciation lesson, by the way. And something I hear quite a lot is students saying, hey, Greg, I have a doubt, doubt, doubt, doubt. Well, did you know that when we have the BT combination of letters, especially at the end of words, the B is silent? And did you also know you should say I have a question instead of I have a doubt. But anyway, look at these examples: doubt, debt, and subtle. Now, this doesn't work when we're using -sub as a prefix meaning below, like subtitle or subterrain. But generally, this rule works well.

Now, yes, I'm going to include the phonetic transcription of the words in this lesson. If you're not familiar with the sounds, with the symbols of these transcriptions, please take the time to learn them. It will really, really benefit you when you're learning pronunciation, OK? It changed my life when I learned them when I was learning French. And I make it really, really simple for you in that video up there. So I'll put a link in the description. Please watch that video. It will absolutely benefit you when you're learning pronunciation. OK, let's have a look at the next rule.

Here's another rule for the silent B. And this is for words that end MB. In this situation, we do not pronounce the letter B. Dumb, thumb, lamb, climb, bomb, tomb. Again. Do you hear? Do you see? There's no B in the transcription. And you do not hear any B at the end of that word. So don't pronounce it just because we write it. It will not help us understand you. It will do the opposite. OK? If I asked you if you want a teab, you'd probably say, what a teab? Yeah, I don't pronounce a B at the end of T, so don't pronounce a B at the end of thumb because it doesn't exist in spoken English.

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