eli5: Why are there “silent letters” in words if they’re not meant to be pronounced? E.g. Why spell it “plumber” instead of “plummer”?

Question

This is true for a lot of words and I don’t understand what the point of including letters if they’re not supposed to be pronounced.

In: 6

Answer 1

The word plumber comes from the Latin plumbum meaning lead, this is also why lead has the Pb symbol on a periodic table of elements. Most of our English language comes from other older languages, one of which is Latin.