Why are silent letters a thing?
In: Culture
Oh I know this one! Because they used to not be.
I asked a Spanish teacher once why H’s are silent and he explained that they weren’t always silent.
Take the english word “name” he said. It used to be pronounced “nah-may”, but over time, we emphasized the first vowel more and more until the m sound merged with the long A and the E became silent.
Some silent letters were pronounced by themselves and some changed the way letters around them sounded. But eventually the pronunciation shifted, but the spelling did not.
Edit to add: and we have to keep the spelling because how a word looks signifies its root origins so we can know its meaning. (Weigh vs Way, Weight vs Wait)
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