For words such as ‘Knife’ and ‘Crumb’, they can easily just be spelt as Nife and Crum, right?
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In the case of knife, the word evolved from ancient German and Dutch words in which the K sound was actually spoken. In Anglo-Saxon times knife was written cnif and probably pronounced as ca-niff.
In the case of crumb (OE cruma/crome/crumme), it’s the result of hypercorrection — words initially only ending in -m that had an additional -b added in a mistaken attempt at consistency
I can recommend the YouTube channel Rob Words for a couple of very nice videos on this topic.
Here is one specifically for the “silent B”, but he has many others: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j07f-cKWRtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j07f-cKWRtk)
Keep in mind though, that not all languages have silent letters. And of those who have them, English is probably the worst of them all, as English spelling is particularly inconsistent in many aspects (yes, he made a video on that as well.. 🙂
English was influenced by a number of other languages, when the British Isles got invaded several times, and the invaders brought their languages with them.
Those languages, their rules, spelling, and grammar all influence English over the centuries where they mix.
But really, the answer is French. The Normans invaded England in 1066 and stuck around for a while. Anyone who knows French knows that language *loves* silent letters.
The history of the English language is a really extensive and fascinating topic, and it’s hard to do justice in passing.
Short answer is that for all of these words, most of the time it is because they used to be pronounced differently, so the “silent” letters made sense.
Languages changes constantly, there is no one “correct” version of any language. Sounds get changed, added and removed from words all the time, and it happens very naturally.
The *spelling* of words doesn’t change quite as quickly, since it’s important that someone reading this text in 100 years time can still understand it, even if the way it is said has changed in that time.
“Knife” was indeed at one point in time pronounced closer to “Cuh-nife”. The sound of words *tends* to change towards pronunciations which are more efficient, without losing the meaning. The hard “Kuh” at the start of Knife and the hard “Buh” at the end of Crumb makes these words harder to say; there’s an extra syllable. So over time, it was dropped.
Edit: Although looking at another comment, it seems I’m partially mistaken on the B, and in some cases this was added to spellings by scholars who were trying to make a more uniform language, and in other cases were trying to revise English spellings to be more like the original Latin ones.
It’s worth remember that up until 500-ish years ago the number of people who could read the language was small, and the number of people who were tasked with actually *writing* was even smaller again. So a small number of people could very easily make individual decisions that would change the entire language for centuries to come.
If you or I choose to write “nife” from now on, it won’t make a difference. But if a monk in the 1400s decides that he’s going to write “Lamb of God” instead of “Lam of Gode” from now on, then that could become the new standard.
Many silent letters influence how the word is pronounced even if the letter itself is silent. The e in knife for example.
Similar reason to why we have an appendix and a tailbone. Served some use in past iterations but not much in the current version.
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