Silent letters are basically alphabets in a word that are not pronounced when spoken. For example, in the word knight, the ‘k’ and ‘gh’ are silent, and what we pronounce is ‘nite’.

In an effort to avoid future exile, I compiled a list of all the words with easily-forgotten silent letters. They may not be as wretched as colonel but most of them are still pretty cringe-worthy.

NEW YORK — Lip-readers’ minds seem to “hear” the words their eyes see being formed. And the better a person is at lipreading, the more neural activity there is in the brain’s auditory ...