Neither; scent is pronounced that way because there are two graphemes at the start which stand for the phoneme . It's as if the word were spelt "ssent" - we wouldn't say that either "s" is silent if that were the case.
Neither; scent is pronounced that way because there are two graphemes at the start which stand for the phoneme . It's as if the word were spelt "ssent" - we wouldn't say that either "s" is silent if that were the case.
You could make that argument about any word with silent parts. Impressed you know about graphemes and phonemes, nonetheless.
You could make that argument about any word with silent parts. Impressed you know about graphemes and phonemes, nonetheless.
It depends on the word. One could say that there is a silent "e" in "hope" because no phoneme which would correspond to an "e" is pronounced where the grapheme occurs in the word (of course, the "e" contributes to the [oʊ], but the letter itself at the end of the word is silent).
Linguistics nerd here to try and answer your question.
The words <cent> <sent> and <scent> are homophones.
In Standard British English, the words are all pronounced /sɛnt/ (IPA)
I would argue that according to the written IPA form, the <c> is silent. If it was pronounced alongside the <s> then it would be /skɛnt/ (skent)
However, as <cent> is also /sɛnt/, we could look at how the <s> would be if it was pronounced alongside the <c>. Assuming <c> represents /s/, the two letters together would be /ssɛnt/ which would probably shorten to /sɛnt/
So surely, <c> is the silent letter. In the first instance, turning it into a sound would change the sound of the word. In the second instance, where we don't, it doesn't matter anyway.
And yes, I know this is bad logic and I am joking.