Re: My favorite silent English letter is:

[ikegami]

in reply to My favorite silent English letter is:

The "z" is technically not silent in "rendezvous". "ez" as a whole forms the "é" sound, and neither letter on its own would sound that way. It's like English's "sh", but it's a vowel instead of a consonant. French has many such combinations.

The "o" in "opossum" is not silent. "Possum" refers to a completely different animal.

Which "r" of "surprise" do think is silent?!

[mertserger]

"Which "r" of "surprise" do think is silent?!"

ikegami,

I think to many Americans the first syllable of "serpent" has a noticiable "r" at the end whereas "surprise" doesn't, so that is what they mean by the missing r. To me they both have more-or-less the same first syllable, so I suspect I would sound like I am not saying the "r" in "serpent" to them as well.

As I said in another post on this thread the technical term is "rhotic" for the pronunciation which says the "r" in "serpent", "non-rhotic" where you don't. Wikipedia has an interesting article on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents. Are you a non-rhotic speaker too?

[runrig]

The "o" in "opossum" is not silent. "Possum" refers to a completely different animal.

According to Merriam-Webster, the "o" in opossum is optionally silent.

I'm not sure what to make of the pronunciation of opossum at dict.org, as I can't find a pronunciation guide there (maybe the "*" after the "O" means it's optional? - update: Nope, other examples show clearly it's just a delimiter between syllables).

I find it interesting that only the opossum "plays possum." I think perhaps the "o" is an invisible silent letter in that phrase :-)