Why is pneumonia spelled with a p

Would you like to comment on this article or view other readers' comments? Register Sign in. If the 'P' in pneumonia is meant to be silent, why did the English put it there? Fred Khumalo Columnist. In some respects, the English language is illogical, the writer says. English is crazy and illogical. That is why it will never stop confounding people.

Teach African languages at schools We have entered into a new school year on our calendar with a lot of scars and bruises on our public education system. The past tense for "cry" is "cried". But the past tense for "fly" is not "flied". I did warn you: English is absurd. Raising a child that does not speak their home language? Here are some tips to adopt at home For many black South African adults, not being able to speak or understand their mother tongue is a sore topic: the embarrassment and cultural English and Afrikaans to be introduced at the under-subscribed township schools The Gauteng department of education will introduce English and Afrikaans as the language of teaching and learning in the under-subscribed township Next Article.

Please read our Comment Policy before commenting. Here are some tips to Our stories must be told in our own voices and languages. This kind of situation is the same for words beginning with kn like knife, know, and words beginning with gn like gnome and gnostic. When you get words like these you'll know that they have a source in a county whose language is different from our own.

Interestingly, P as the first letter in a word was very uncommon in Old English but this changed when more words were added from the Greek and other languages, and now P is the 3rd most common initial letter of words. Pneumonia is one of the words where the p is silent. Pneumatics another. These words come from the Greek, and in Greek the p is not silent. However, in English, pn is not a normal finding.

It was not found in Old English and it violates the rules of consonant clusters. Other words that have such a violation may just simplify and drop the initial letter. There is a similar situation for g, where words such as gnome do not pronounce the g. The explanation and origin is the same.

Blame the adoption of Greek words in English. Forgot your password? Speak now. Discuss Health Disease Pneumonia. And because of the power of the printing press, their depredations on English spelling stuck. Stephanie Cash. Why do we have silent letters in the English language? Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and get insider knowledge. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies.

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Then there is the formerly mentioned ruffian colonel , in which neither o behaves properly and the second o doesn't even bother to try. But in addition to those we then also have jeopardy , leopard , and people. We'll let you draw your own conclusions about o.

P is silent before n in a selection of somewhat technical terms, such as pneumonia and pneumatic. And it's silent before s in a different selection of words such as psalm , psyche , and psychology.

It boldly says nothing in corps and coup and receipt. In some pronunciations of comptroller it somehow convinces m to join with it in dissembling; the two there impersonate n. Q tends to function wholly aboveboard as an upstanding member of the alphabet. Most of us are fortunate to encounter its dereliction in lacquer only occasionally.

R exists in forecastle only to mock landlubbers. It exists in February only to make us suffer. S is a mostly-reliable letter. Its failings are limited largely to aisle , apropos , debris , isle , and island. We cannot, however, overlook its participation in the hot mess that is bourgeois. T refuses to be audible in ballet , castle , listen , and whistle. In asthma it conspires with h to shun its usual duties.

U may appear reasonable, but evidence to the contrary is not difficult to find: build , catalogue , dialogue , colleague , guard , guess , laugh , league , tongue. Note that the second and third of these words have attempted eviction and are meeting with significant success: catalog and dialog are both fully accepted variant spellings. V is at this point the only letter that refuses to be unheard in any established word of the language. And yet a dark cloud gathers on the horizon: in late May a much-followed and likely sleep-addled Twitter user tweeted out what was clearly a partially developed composition.

The Internet seized on the enigmatic final word and discussed it ad nauseam. Of the myriad pronunciations suggested for this non-word, several of the strongest contenders had a silent v.