The role of the silent letter “e” at the end of English words. Simple rules for reading English words

As you know, to learn something you need to make an effort. When it comes to a foreign language, practice is necessary every day. For learning English like playing a musical instrument. You need to read English, as well as play scales, every day! Therefore, we read and read again! This is the second lesson in the series: . Today We read English words with the letter E. The word tables are compiled by syllable type and before you start reading, we suggest you remember again Rules for reading the English letter E in 4 syllable types. For those who have forgotten what syllables we are talking about and what they are called, remember. And we get straight to practice.

Word tables taken from a wonderful manual "Rules of Reading". Author Krylova N.V.

1. Reading the letter E in an open syllable

Rule 1. In an open and conditionally open syllable (below), the English letter E is read as in the alphabet - . By the way, letter combinations ei &ie also read .

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A lot of words in the English language end with the letter “e”. Moreover, the letter “e” itself in this case does not make any sound, that is, it is not readable. Hence the name: “mute “e””. For example: lake - lake. There are actually only six exceptions when "e" is the only vowel in a very short word. In this case, it is read as in the English alphabet: . These six English words are as follows: be - to be, he - he, me - me, me, me, we - we, she [∫i:] - she, the [ði:] before a vowel sound, [ðə] before a consonant sound - definite article.

So why do we need the letter “e” at the end of words in English if it doesn’t have a sound? Having dealt with this, you can make it easier for yourself to read English words. It turns out that she does a lot of different useful things.

Some useful things that involve the silent English “e” are:

1) to open the previous syllable (open syllables in English are those ending with a vowel; the rule for reading the vowel in a syllable depends on this). It can add one or two consonants from the previous syllable. For example: one consonant: make, ma | ke - to do; two consonants: taste, ta | ste - taste. But if the previous syllable contains 3 consonants, then the syllable remains closed. For example: cattle, cat | tle - cattle;

2) to distinguish an ary open syllable from an ary closed one (arry in English are syllables in which the vowel is followed by the letter “r”; the name of the syllables is based on the sound of this letter). Compare how the sound of the letters “a”, “e” changes depending on the openness of the ary syllable: closed syllable: car - car and open syllable care - care, attention, closed syllable: her - her and open syllable: here - here;

3) so that the English letters “c” and “g” are read as in the alphabet: “s” [s], since - since, since; "g", bridge - bridge; in this case, the first syllable is not opened (since the silent “e” in this case has already been used for another rule); only in the combination “-ange” the syllable is open, for example: change - change, dangerous [‘deındʒərəs] - dangerous;

4) to avoid the letter “s” at the end of a word when it is not the ending of English plural nouns or the ending of an English verb in the 3rd person singular present tense: sense - meaning; in this case, the first syllable is not opened (since the silent “e” in this case has already been used for another rule);

5) so that the English letter “v” does not end up at the end of the word. In this case, the previous syllable can be either closed or open, it is not known in advance: lives - lives, lives - lives; have - have, behave, be | ha | ve - behave. Even in the abbreviated form of the verb have: “’ve” (I’ve done it.), the letter “v” is accompanied by a silent “e”. Only Russian surnames starting with “-ov” are written without a silent “e” during transliteration: Krasnov, Zaitsev, sometimes “v” is replaced with two “f”: Raspopoff;

6) to distinguish between words with the same root, often a noun and a verb (and at the same time open the first syllable): bath - bath, bathe - swim, breath - breathing, breathe - breathe, strip - strip, stripe - to carry out stripes;

7) to observe some traditions of writing words, for example: die - die, dye - paint, check - check, machine - machine. Along the way, the silent English “e” denotes the end of the root of a word when adding suffixes and endings to the root: care - care, attention, careful [‘keəful] - attentive, careless [‘keəlıs] - inattentive, careless; courage [‘kʌrıdʒ] - courage, courageous [‘kʌrıdʒəs] - brave; like - like, similar, likely [‘laıklı] - likely, probably; line - line, lines - lines; move - to move, moves - moves, moved - moved, movement [‘mu:vmənt] - movement.