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I came across this word in the answer provided by Robusto for the question about Thank you.

Because the last e in service is not pronounced, I thought it should be deleted when service is appended by able.

I guess the reason for serviceable may be related to the fact that the i in service is pronounced as [ɪ] but not [aɪ].

However, I am not sure, and I would like to know the reason behind that.

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The c is pronounced like k except when it comes before i or e: then it is pronounced like s. In service, c comes before e, so that it is pronounced s. If we add -able, we should normally remove the e, as you said; but then we'd get servicable. Because c before a is pronounced k, the sound of the word would change profoundly; that is undesirable, which is why we add an extra e: serviceable. The same applies to g: change => chang-able => changeable.

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Because "servicable" would be pronounced with a hard c.

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    So what? So there's your answer, @Dante Jiang. And to @James McLeod, +1 from me.
    – Robusto
    Feb 28, 2011 at 3:13
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    I thought the same thing, pronounced it "Servik-able" when I tried to say Servicable.
    – Brett Allen
    Feb 28, 2011 at 3:13
  • @James McLeod, @Robusto, so, the reason is that if I suffix a word, I should not change the original pronunciation?
    – user3812
    Feb 28, 2011 at 3:17
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    In English, there are few absolute rules, but I can't think of any case where the "s" sound like at the end of "service" is changed into a "k" sound by a suffix.
    – James McLeod
    Feb 28, 2011 at 4:42
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    @Dante Jiang: unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. When a suffix derived from Latin is added, it can change both vowel and consonant sounds ("urbane" <=> "urbanity"; "electric" <=> "electricity"). When a native English suffix is added (such as "-able") this is less likely to happen. Of course this is not a great deal of help for a foreign leaner of English.
    – Colin Fine
    Feb 28, 2011 at 14:59

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