Why are silent letters a thing?
In: Culture
Just something to think about:
Things like Shope, could just be for style or societal norms. Like Ye olde in English, vs. “the old” in modern English. Old is the same but the spelling is different simply because… Style?
Things like Pterydactyl or Ptolemy could either be because someone just felt like it or another (older) word that it was derived or translated from had another slightly different pronunciation that required the extra letter.
TL:DR there are many extremely arbitrary and often subtle reasons that are in no way functional, which is why we can still use them.
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