Why does the English language have so many words where one or more letters are silent. For example why couldn’t “Knife” be simply written as nife or whatever combination of letters that make pronunciation obvious.

Question

Why does the English language have so many words where one or more letters are silent. For example why couldn’t “Knife” be simply written as nife or whatever combination of letters that make pronunciation obvious.

In: 2529

Answer 1

This is what makes English so fascinating. It is a Germanic language with a heavy Romantic influence due to William the Conqueror winning the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

For a long time, English was the language of the serfs and merchants, and French was the the language of the aristocracy, then the plague hit. The plague wiped out a huge percentage of the population, and lead to English taking over as the language spoken by all classes in England, but with the heavy influence of French grafted into it.

We still have a lot of words rooted in Old English, but the the romanticization of our Germanic language has lead to our current pronunciation.