silent before and . When the is not silent it must be marked with a trema: . Before and , the is not silent. Greek In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of words, principally distinguishing (ó,ti, "whatever") from (óti, "that"). Slavic languages Czech In the vast majority of cases, Czech pronunciation follows the spelling. There are only four exceptions: D For example: dcera (daughter) and in srdce (heart) /j/ + consonant clusters in some words In most present forms of the verb být ("to be"), namely jsem, jsi, jsme, jste and jsou (i.e. all persons but the 3rd person singular je), the initial cluster /js/ is regularly simplified to a mere /s/. This pronunciation is considered correct and neutral when the verb is unstressed and used as an auxiliary. When stressed or used lexically, only the full /js/ pronunciation is considered correct. In casual speech, however, a few other highly frequent words commonly undergo similar simplification, namely all present forms of jít ("to walk") beginning with /jd/ (that is jdu, jdeš, jde, jdeme, jdete, jdou), the noun jméno ("name") and the verb jmenovat (se) ("to name, to (be) call(ed)"). Russian Several words in Russian omit written consonants when spoken. For example, "чувствовать" (chuvstvovat') is pronounced [ˈt͡ɕustvəvətʲ] and "солнце" (solntse) is pronounced [ˈsont͡sə]. Russian letter ъ has no phonetic value and functions as a separation sign. Before the spelling reform of 1918 this hard sign was written at the end of each word when following a non-palatal consonant. Semitic languages In Hebrew, almost all cases of silent letters are silent aleph – א. Many words that have a silent aleph in Hebrew, have an equivalent word in Arabic language, that is written with a mater lectionis alif –ا ; a letter that indicates the long vowel "aa". Examples: The Hebrew word for "no" is לֹא (sounds like "lo", spelled like "loa") and the Arabic word for "no" is لاَ (sounds and spelled like "laa"). The Hebrew word for "left side" is שְׂמֹאל (sounds like "smol", spelled like "smoal") and the Arabic word for "north" is شَمَال (sounds and spelled like "shamaal"). The Hebrew word for "head" is רֹאשׁ (sounds like "rosh", spelled like "roash") and the Arabic word for "head" is رَأس (sounds and spelled like "ra's"). The explanation for this phenomenon is that the Hebrew language had a sound change of all the