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 are a few reasons.

1. English is a collection of words borrowed from, or inspired by, many other languages, so many of our words are spelled in a way that makes more sense in a different language.

2. Standardized spelling is actually rather recent, so for a long time, people just spelled words however made sense to them, and eventually, some of those spellings became the standard.

3. In some cases, we *did* at one time pronounce those letters, but the way we speak evolves a lot faster than how we spell.