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

In many cases, the words were pronounced as they were spelled many many many years ago. But over time, the way we say the words changed, but the way we spelled them did not. So you end up with words whose spelling no longer reflects their pronounciation.

In other cases, the words are borrowed from other languages with different rules for spelling.