Why do so many words in English begin with a silent “p” like psychiatrist or pterodactyl?
In: 1812
Because those words actually come from other languages and languages are… well… different.
More specifically, both of those starting sounds come from Ancient Greek where the P wasn’t silent, they would have said them.
Psy in this case comes from “Psi”, a Greek letter that looks like a fancy pitchfork. It actually does have a “ps” sound that we, in Modern English, often drop because start a word with a “Puhss” sound is awkward, but when you have it in the middle of a word, we have kept the “puhs” sound, for example in the word “Lapse”. that “pse”-bit is just showing we have a “psss” sound in Modern English, we just don’t like to start words with it.
Similarly with Pterodactly, the “pter” bit, which is Greek for “wing” does technically have a “puh-tt” sound, we’ve just dropped the “puh” because it sucks when it’s in the beginning of a word. Exactly like Psy though, we *do* pronounce the puh when it’s in the middle of a word, such as in “Helicopter”, “Helico” meaning spinning and “pter” meaning wing. (that’s the same ‘pter’ in Helicopter as in Pterodactyl – meaning “wing fingers”)
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