Silence!

Right, so don't ask me why I did this - it was just something which crossed my mind. I finished my Metro quite quickly in the tube this morning and had some time to kill. I don't know why the thought of silent letters came to me but i started to list down examples of silent letters -one word for each letter. As a rule I assumed vowel sequences which form a single vowel sound to have no silent letters (so, words like break, bread, field, etc are assumed to have no silent letters). Similarly, doubled consonants (dull, rotten, egg, etc) or standard consonant sequences where the sound cannot be attributed to a letter (sc-, th-, sh-, etc) are also not considered silent.

Couldn't complete the alphabet but here goes

A - Momentary

B - Debt

C - Worcester

D - Wednesday

E - Name

F - Halfpenny

G- Sing

H- Honest

I - Business

J - Marijuana (?)

K - Knot

L - Calm

M- Mnemonic

N- Solemn

O - Offertory

P - Psalm

Q - ?

R - Farm (true in RP English and other non rhotic forms)

S - Island

T - Whistle

U - Vague

V - ?

W - Who

X - Borderaux

Y - Says

Z - Rendezvous


So, do help out with Q and V please.

Incidentally, I was wondering which letter is silent the most often. I don't have any data of any sort but I should assume that in non rhotic forms "r" and "e" are likely to vie for top spot followed by "g"; while in rhotic forms (since, by definition, the "r" will not be silent) "e" will almost definitely top the list followed by "g". Does anyone know of any data to answer such a question?