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

Because modern day English is a Frankenstein’s monster of a language, stitched together from wildly different sources. It is technically a Germanic language, but much of it is actually descended from a Romantic base (French).