Why are silent letters a thing?
In: Culture
Though I couldn’t possibly give any grammatical or etymological reason for this, I think it’s cool how some seemingly extraneous and unnecessary silent letters are like “sleeper agents” which become “activated” when you add a suffix (and sometimes even a prefix).
Examples:
GN: sign — signal, signature; gnostic — agnostic
GM: paradigm — paradigmatic
MB: bomb — bombastic
MN: hymn — hymnal; damn — damnation
UI: fruit — fruition
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