Edit: thanks, but I’m more interested in speech rather than writing. This question is from an actual 5 year old.
Edit: please be patient, I’m definitely confused.
Back story,
I’m trying to teach my kid spellings using phonetics (like they do in their schooll. So far kid is doing great except the words with silents. One thing led to another and I had to ask this here.
In: 2
First: I want to [share this.](https://youtube.com/c/PreschoolPrepCompany) My son watched all of these videos over and over to learn phonics and it helped a lot.
Second: English was not written down until the French invaded. They did not have letters for all of the sounds that English has. So they tried to combine letters to approximate the sound: “th” and “gh” are examples of this.
Third: In some cases like Knife and Knight, English just stopped saying the “k”, but left the spelling.
Forth: for silent e, I am not sure the origin, but it uses the “vowel-consonant-vowel makes the first vowel long” rule very nicely.
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