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

There’s a lot of great answers here (specifically about island) but another reason is because English spelling isn’t primarily about pronunciation — it’s about meaning. We use morphemes (smallest parts of words that have meaning — the word “fastest” has too morphemes — the base “fast” and the suffix “est”) to add comprehensibility to the word, even if it’s not reflected in pronunciation. Morphemes are why we can have so many long words — antidisestablishmentarianism (a favorite of mine as a kid) has a base of “establish” and then lots of prefixes and suffixes added on that change the meaning and type of the base word.

Psyche- is a base that means mind (from Latin, with a Greek origin). Although we don’t say the p, having it there helps you understand words like psychology (study of minds), psychodrama (a drama that involves a lot of interiority). In other languages like the original Greek, it’s pronounced /ps/ but English doesn’t like having that sound begin words (we don’t mind it at the end, like the words sips), so it’s pronounce /s/.

English also has lots of homonyms like “piece” and “peace” or “know” and “no” — we use different spelling to make clear which word is which. We then use those base words to make other words (knowledge, piecemeal) that relate to the meaning of the base.

This morphological approach, combined with the many words English got from other languages with different rules for pronunciation and spelling, leads to a language where spelling is a poor guide for pronunciation, but gives you lots of other info about words. If you have other specific words you’re interested in, etymonline is a really great resource for any word you might be wondering about.