the preceding vowel, for example in dağ ("mountain") . In other surroundings, it may be pronounced as a glide. Persian In Persian, there are two instances of silent letters: The letter he after a short vowel, unless in a monosyllabic word, has no sound of its own. It is only written because according to spelling rules a word cannot end in a short vowel. The Silent Vav is always written but not spoken in Standard Persian. It used to represent the labialization of the voiceless velar fricative, which no longer exists in the standard dialect, making it an archaic remnant of the old standards of pronunciation. Indic languages Unconventional to Sanskrit and Proto-Indo-European root languages, some Indic languages have silent letters. Among Dravidian languages, Tamil and Malayalam have certain distinct styles of keeping few of their letters silent. Tamil Tamil is a classical language phonetically characterized by allophones, approximants, nasals and glottalised sounds. Some words, however, have silent letters in them. The words அஃது (while that is), and அஃதன் (that) contain the Āytam or '', which is not pronounced in Modern Tamil. It is explained in the Tolkāppiyam that āytam could have glottalised the sounds it was combined with, though some may argue it sounded more like the Arabic '' (). That being said, modern words like ஆஃபிஸ் (Office) use '' and '' in sequence to represent the sound, as the āytam is nowadays also used to transcribe it and other foreign phonemes. Another convention in Middle Tamil (Sen-Tamil) is the use of silent vowels to address a mark of respect when beginning proper nouns. The Ramayana was one such text where the word Ramayana in Tamil always began with '', as in இராமாயணம் (), though it was not pronounced. The name கோபாலன் () was so written as உகோபாலன் prefixed with an ''. Malayalam Inheriting elision, approximants and allophones from Tamil, in Malayalam, except for Sanskrit words, words ending in the vowel '' () become silent at the end and if not compounded with words succeeding them, replace the '' vowel by the schwa . However, it is considered disrespectful to change this pronunciation in the simple present verbs, when using imperatives and using what can be termed as Imperative-Active voice in Malayalam, where the second person is respectfully addressed with his or her name instead of നീ (, you) or നിങ്ങൽ (, yourselves). For example, in the sentence, രാകേശ്