> English has not managed to shed its own. The language suffers similarly (and for the same reason) with the silent letters in doubt, plumber, subtle, indict, and island.
I'm confused. Which letter is silent in "plumber"?
I'm confused. Which letter is silent in "plumber"?
Other examples: dumb, tomb, comb, womb, numb, thumb, catacomb, Coulomb. All of these have a silent B.
And to be fair, I am aware New England English is its own distinct thing so I might have grown up in a bubble:
Another one I, as a non native speaker, find odd, is "iron". People just say it as "ion", dropping the 'r', right?? At least that's what I hear.
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/iron
Yeah, but the Brits make up for that by stuffing a lot of extraneous 'r's in between other words.
(TBF, that's a kind of sensible simplification of pronunciation: it's used when one word ends and the next starts with a wovel, to ease the transition.)
I was taught it's pronounced "plummer". So, the 'b'.