Why do many words have silent letters when even without them the word would sound the same, like ‘island’ and many others.

Question

I tried asking my English teacher back in school but even she did not have an answer.

In: 157

Answer 1

Used to be we did pronounce them. The I and S in Island are what’s left from an ancient English word that meant water. So literally, island means water land. (Small correction. The English word, which I can only use my keyboard to spell ieg, merged with the French Isle, to become Island).

Similarly, knight used to have all the letter pronounced, but as English evolved, Ki-ni-cht became a clunky way of speaking, and like a lot of English, eventually transformed into the word “knight” which we can pronounce with much greater speed.

Now there are words where this isn’t the case. Take the word debt, which derives from old French “debitum” or literally, something owed. We don’t pronounce the B, but when we were writing down the dictionary, someone wrote it to resemble the Latin word, rather than how we pronounce it, with no B.

So yeah, there are words that were written out before we changed our pronunciation, and thus they keep the letters, even when it contradicts spelling (which is partially why French has so many silent letters), or someone wrote the word down to resemble where it originates from, but doesn’t necessarily follow how it’s pronounced.