An aid to pronunciation?

My brother and I devised a word game in which one purports to give the pronunciation of all the alphabetical letters, but in fact chooses words in which that letter is silent. We've made a start:
A as in health
B as in thumb
C as in science etc.
We're having particular trouble with J and X (unless one allows roux, which is really a French word.)
Can anyone come up with a complete alphabet on the above lines?

Plenty for X from the French. Faux, Beaux, Milleux.
Sioux is another non-sounding X. However the best one would by X as in Xylophone.

Oh dear - there goes another day when I should be studying. Off to think about it - back later!

Meantime, it's very old but in case you hadn't seen it before, I've always rather liked the word that comes up regularly on linguistics courses. It's the 'alternative spelling of 'fish' - ghoti. GH - as in 'cough'; O - as in 'women'; TI - as in 'edition'.

Up at the Listener/Ximenes end of the spectrum, there is the word bijwoner in Chambers, with a silent j.
And with respect to andyl, the X in Xylophone is not silent when I pronounce the word.

It isn't when I say it either. It was just a clumsily worded post. The X in Xylophone isn't pronounced as ecks though.

Thanks,Booksloth, I remember seeing this ages ago but had forgotten it. Thanks also to affle for "bijwoner", not a word that one comes across every day. What does it mean? The letters we're currently having trouble with are F, V and Z, if anyone has any suggestions. However while thinking about silent letters, we came up with a silent word - WHELK
with W as in Wrong, H as in honest, E as in hoe, L as in Half or Caulk and K as in Knee.

A bijwoner is/was a landless white person, or a squatter on another's land, in South Africa.
Thank you for three more time-wasting opportuniites. Whelk is excellent.

#6 Love the silent word. Sorry to go all French again but how about 'rendezvous' for the 'z' one?

ETA - And 'halfpenny' for the 'f'? Still working on that 'v'.

Great suggestions, thanks Booksloth. "Halfpenny" is brilliant and "rendezvous" has comfortably acclimatised as an English word. Now for the v (and possibly a more familiar J)

'Hallelujah'?

Like 'Jesus' and 'Tejas', it's not silent, just not pronounced as a 'Jay'.

I don't have a silent 'J' word to offer as yet though.

True.

Some pronunciations of marijuana come close...

That's a good one. If you pronounce it 'ma ri oo WAN a' then the J is indeed silent.

Still struggling with 'v' though.

Yes, I agree, that's J dealt with - thanks dwt42.
Perhaps it's time to print the rest of the alphabet - it might inspire us to crack the "v" problem.

(Any other suggestions or improvements welcome)

A hoarse
B dumb
C scene
D handkerchief
E heart
F halfpenny
G gnash
H honest
I plaid
J marijuana
K knee
L caulk
M mnemonic
N hymn
O country
P psalm
Q lacquer
R far
S island
T mortgage
U buy
V ?
W wrong
X roux
Y beyond
Z rendezvous

I suspect a lot of Americans (and some with regional British accents such as Devon) might take issue with your 'R far'. But it works for me; I assume as your profile says you're in Australia that you also have a non-rhotic accent and would pronounce 'far' as 'faah'...

I have no problems with 'far' but I do wonder how you can pronounce 'beyond' without using the 'y'. Apart from that, I would just be a smartarse if I asked how do you know it's the 'q' that is silent in lacquer? It might be the 'c'. Good list, though - must have taken a while.

'Forecastle' would avoid the difficulty over different pronunciations of 'far'. And I'm not keen on 'beyond' either - something like 'layer' would sound - or not sound - better to me. But it's a good list - I very much like the juxtaposition of the two 'mn's, with first one, then the other, silent. Must be fun to learn English as a foreign language...

I'm partial to February, which seems to have lost its first R in most of the places I've lived (US, though).

If I can use that, then I'd suggest "voir dire" which is often pronounced "why deer" even though the v sound should be there.

‘Forecastle’ I like.

Yes, forecastle seems a great solution for "R", thanks affle. I hadn't considered the US and regional accents aspect - the further one goes the more one gets mired in difficulties. I can see the problem with "beyond" too. Ah well, it's a work in progress and all suggestions/criticisms will be gratefully received, especially if we can find an example for the elusive V....
(I hadn't heard that pronunciation of "voir dire", legallypuzzled - is it legalese, similar to "sine die" being pronounced "siney dye"?)

>21 legallypuzzled:, 23

It might just be my failing memory, but doesn't 'voir dire' pop up in My Cousin Vinney?

Following the 'forecastle' strand, for T you could have 'boatswain'. (And 'forecastle', come to that.)
As for V, surely there must be some Oxbridge colleges that routinely omit it?