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During Delhi riots:Anurag Kashyap:Vishal Dadlani:Gauahar Khan:Swara Bhaskar:Kritika Kamra:Now,Telinipara riot (Hoogly):Anurag Kashyap (silent)Swara Bhaskar (silent)Vishal Dadlani (silent)Gauahar khan (silent)kritika Kamra (silent)SD

Once upon a time, there was a letter. This letter lived quite a nice life representing a voiceless stop consonant pronounced at the velar ridge at the back of your mouth. Its name was C, its sound was [k], and its language was Latin.C stood situated in the language of the Romans with only that sound to its name. Its sister K existed too, but was relegated to serving no more than the occasional Greek loanword. If you wanted to write the /k/ sound in a Latin word, your tool was the letter C.C always, always made the /k/ sound, never /s/. A cactus, meaning “something thorny” in Latin, was “kaktus”, very similarly to its modern English pronunciation. Centum, “hundred”, was pronounced “kentum”; cancer was “kanker”, not “kanser”.For centuries, C fulfilled its duties consistently and happily. There were times where it and Q had their issues, and for the early days it was synonymous with G. Besides these little skirmishes, though, it was a fine letter of the 1st-century alphabet. You could depend on C, unlike the multi-purposed and oft-misused letter H.But this did not last forever. Sounds are liquid, ever-changing and blending and melting and dripping off. H had already begun to falter; V was shifting from a /w/ to a /v/ as they spoke. C knew it would eventually be doomed to assimilation or fricativization, and by the end of the western Roman Empire, it had begun down this road.A, O, and U were the so-called back vowels, the ones pronounced at the back of your mouth. C rather liked these back vowels and felt comfortable around them; it held on to its original pronunciation whenever it came before one of them. The words cactus, collect, and cup, all of Latin origin, are living examples of this: their C appears before those back vowels.Before the front vowels E, I, and Y, however, C felt something different. It felt drawn to them, as though it too wanted to be up there near the front of the mouth. It did its best to resist, but soon found itself suffering a bout of palatalization: a shift from its previous position up to the hard palate, right at the front of the roof of your mouth.C had slowly become a [ts] sound before E, I, and Y. Centum was more like tsentum now; cancer was cantser. Cibus, “food”, was tsibus now. Even a word like scientia, “knowledge” - originally pronounced “skientia” - had come to be pronounced “stsientia”.The Romance languages had arisen. A handful, especially Sardinian, hadn’t undergone widespread palatalization of C, but most had. Latin had died; its children were left with the question of what to do with this new [ts]-for-a-C sound. Their solutions varied, but there is one particular language whose choices would have more influence on English than any other.French decided that [ts] was too complicated a sound, so it dropped the [t]: centum, previously “tsentum”, became “sentum”. Due to entirely unrelated changes, the -um got left out as well, and French ended up with cent, pronounced “sent”.But what about words like scientia, which by now had become science in Old French? It’s already got an “s”! Aye, but sound change functions by how a word is said, not how it’s spelled. Science (“stsientse”) became “siense”, its two “s” sounds merging into one.A word like scene would’ve begun its journey pronounced as “skene”, then palatalized to “stsene”, then finally simplified under French to “sene”. French then dumped its etymology into poor old English, spellings and all, hence problems that today end us up with questions like these.So to answer your question, neither letter is silent. Due to a series of historical sound changes, the C sound eventually turned into an [s] sound and then combined with the S that was already there.The question is asking about the story behind the “sc” spelling, and I’m guessing that “scent” was chosen just as an example of this sort of thing. However, the story behind specifically the word “scent” is a little more complicated.The word was originally “sent”, from French sentir (“feel”, “sense”), from Latin sentire, with the same meaning. English writers later decided that the word could do well with a “c” via a process explained better here and in the other answers to this question. In this one particular case, then, the “c” is definitely the silent letter.Thanks for asking!

There's a joke that's been circulating the Internet [1] for many years that pokes fun at the idea.Try reading the following aloud:The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c." Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard "c" will be replased with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f". This will make words like fotograf" 20 persent shorter.In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.Ze drem vil finali kum tru.[1] I was still at BP when I first saw it, and I left there in 2000, so at least 15 years old.