Why is P silent in Pneumonia?

Pneumonia is one of the words with silent first letters. Many words in the English language are borrowed from other languages. Take pneumonia, for instance; it was borrowed from Greek. In Greek, the initial P is pronounced, but in old English, consonant clusters were not common, leading to the omission of the first later when pronounced.

In the English language, words beginning with “pn” and “ps” often omitted the first letter when pronounced. Examples are Psychology and pterodactyl. There is also the silent “k” in some words. The same rule applies to these words. Examples are Know, knife, knowledge, and so on. The silent “g” is another one. Examples of words with silent g include gnome and gnostic.

Pneumonia is one of those words with a silent p you only have to remember when you're spelling. The word is derived from Greek. We pronounce most of our borrowed words in a way that is comfortable or possible for us. The Greeks will have pronounced words differently, taking account of the initial p. This kind of situation is the same for words beginning with kn like knife, know, and words beginning with gn like gnome and gnostic.

When you get words like these you'll know that they have a source in a county whose language is different from our own. Interestingly, P as the first letter in a word was very uncommon in Old English but this changed when more words were added from the Greek and other languages, and now P is the 3rd most common initial letter of words.

Pneumonia is one of the words where the p is silent. Pneumatics another. These words come from the Greek, and in Greek the p is not silent. However, in English, pn is not a normal finding. It was not found in Old English and it violates the rules of consonant clusters.

Other words that have such a violation may just simplify and drop the initial letter. There is a similar situation for g, where words such as gnome do not pronounce the g. The explanation and origin is the same. Blame the adoption of Greek words in English