eli5: Why do some words have silent letters in them? Like Psyche, debt….
In: 2
Short answer: because English is weird and all languages except maybe math are highly imperfect.
Long answer: English has evolved from a great mix of foreign words and associated pronunciations. There’s latin-rooted words like psychology where the P is silent and the CH is pronounced like a K, there’s french words like baguette which skip entire letters when said out loud, there’s asian words like anime where the final E is actually pronounced… on and on and on.
And don’t get me even started on irish names like Siobhan or words like leprechaun.
And all of those source languages went through their own word evolutions. Their original language also picked them up from somewhere else, and then the pronounciation drifted, or the spelling respected the way the word was originally written down so “silent” letters came into the newly adopted word. Converting to English just made it worse.
We’re kind of a mess at communication consistency thanks to the giant dumpster of word origins in our language. And the spelling shows for this.
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