Why are silent letters a thing?
In: Culture
I can’t remember the exact history, but it’s related to a phenomenon in English called ‘The Great Vowel Shift’. As previous comments have said, words were pronounced phonetically, but the accent and tonal pronunciation of England changed rapidly over the space of around 200 years – making the phonetic spellings moot. Lots of spellings haveodernised since, but the silent letters have stuck around.
The weird and wonderful world of medieval linguistics
Edit: whoops: 200 years, not 20
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