Talk:Silent e/Archive 1

message: I always thought "bad" and  "bade" were pronounced identically. He bade him farewell. She forbade him to do x, y and z. It's the same, isn't it? jguk 19:28, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Bade, as the past tense of bid, can have either pronunciation according to the American Heritage Dictionary.  -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:32, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Interestingly enough, the /bæd/ pronunciation forms a minimal pair with "bad" in Aust Eng which has /bæːd/ for this. JIMp talk·cont 03:01, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Bad" and "bade" 

message: Hmm, should we really say that "ei" is a long "a", as this is ambiguous and confusing. Is there a better way to describe the sound changes? Zeimusu | (Talk page) 14:23, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  long vowels 

message: The links in the very first paragraph of the article take us to an article on vowel length, which immediately contradicts the present article. It reads, "While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in many other languages..." This is true. The terms "long" and "short" have been used inaccurately in English reading education for decades. The fact is that the Silent E makes you say an entirely different phoneme, not a version of the phoneme longer in duration. There is nothing about the sound /ɪ/ as in "rid" that becomes 'longer' when we add a letter E to the spelling. Rather, the vowel sound is an entirely different phoneme, the diphthong /aɪ/--"ride." 
I would like to represent the common educational terms (short and long) as contradictory to the research available from linguistics, or correct them to match linguistics of English. Jerekson 06:15, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is true that the way the terms "long vowel" and "short vowel" are used in this context is potentially confusing.  However, Wikipedia is not the place to try to reform the world.  Rather, we have to stick to describing it.  It turns out the "long" and "short" have meanings other than duration in this context.  Unfortunate, but that's the way the English language is. --Ccrrccrr (talk) 19:16, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not incorrect or unfortunate; it's just idiosyncratic. God save us from whatever neologisms the correctitudians would come up with. 207.194.133.9 (talk) 00:15, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Long and Short

message: Why is e capitalized throughout the article, as if a proper noun? I believe the proper style would be italics. Potatoswatter 08:11, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  capitalization 

message: I wrote:
:  
: Silent e is a writing convention in English spelling.
: 
Here it is without the "nowiki":
: 
: Silent e is a writing convention in English spelling.
: 
On my browser I'm seeing the phrase "Silent e" in bold above, as I intended, and the rest of the sentence not bolded, also as I intended, and the e in italics, again as I intended.  But within the article this markup is causing the whole paragraph to appear in bold.  What's going one? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:58, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad software bug? 

message: i added the word often to the introduction.  i think it is misleading without it.  Daiv (talk) 00:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  it depends 

message: The change doesn't always make the 'a' sound . As for example: far  - fare  (just like fair), war  - ware  (just like wear or where), car  - care . How about this group? Ferike333 (talk) 19:16, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There are dialects (such as my own) that do not have  before  unless there is a syllable boundary (such as with slayer).  In such dialects, historical  has become . — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 00:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, just like in general English. I think only dialects have . Ferike333 (talk) 15:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That's absolutely false. By the way, would you like some help off of your high horse there? Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 00:50, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  'a' group 

message: The 'o' in 'come' is there owing to the spelling (orthography) of the Norman French who noted the Carolina script that didn't let a 'u' be put before letters like 'm', 'n', or 'v' (which was also 'u') ... nor did the French let a word end with 'v'/'u' ... an 'e' would be added. The word 'come' in Old English was cuman, the word 'come' has always been said as 'cum' ... the 'o' and 'e' were put there by the Norman French spelling. Same for 'love' (also luv) ... and for 'some'. Indeed ... there was lufsum.
Captive came straight from Latin (not thru French) but follows the Norman French spelling of not ending a word with the letter 'v'. Dropping the silent 'e' that does not change the vowel before it, is always a part of spelling reforms like SR1. --AnWulf ... Wes þu hal! (talk) 15:27, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Truly silent 'e'

message: Why is this at Silent e it's better known as "magic e" ... it's not even really silent in that it's the two vowel letters in combination which spells the sound. JIMp talk·cont 03:09, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: This article also discusses "e's" that are truly silent, like in "have", "give", "determine", "active" etc. Hence the title "silent e". In a way, all letters are silent. Letters don't really make sound, vocal cords do. 4.238.1.122 (talk) 19:18, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Magic e 

message: There's a lot of extraneous content in this article, which I may perhaps remove. The separate subsections on the "a group", "e group", etc. are quite unnecessary, since the double values of English orthographic vowels are a general feature of the orthography, not specific the role of silent e. The section on fictional silent e's is embarassing trivia. 207.194.133.9 (talk) 00:29, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Extraneous content 

message: The verb to mete is rather rare. Wouldn't Pete or heme be better examples? --Squidonius (talk) 01:09, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mete