Conversation I had with Copilot today on the English language
Tell me all the letters in the English Alphabet that when spelled out the way they are pronounced, don’t start with the original letter.
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This is a fun little linguistic puzzle, and your intuition is right — several letters don’t start with the sound of the letter itself when you say their names out loud.
Letters whose spelled‑out names do NOT start with their own letter
These letters begin with a different sound entirely:
Letter_______Pronunciation ____________ Starts with…
F_____________“ef”___________________________________________E
L_____________“el”___________________________________________E
M_____________“em”___________________________________________E
N_____________“en”___________________________________________E
R_____________“ar”___________________________________________A
S_____________“es”___________________________________________E
X_____________“ex”___________________________________________E
W_____________“double‑you”___________________________________D
Why these letters behave this way
They’re all consonants whose names evolved from older languages (Latin, Greek, French), and the easiest way to pronounce them was to prepend a vowel sound so the consonant could stand alone as a syllable.
That’s why you get “ef,” “el,” “em,” etc. — the vowel is basically scaffolding.
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Letters that Copilot left out from this list are
The letter C, that is pronounced like the word See for sight, with an es. The letter H, that is pronounced: Eich. It starts with the letter E.