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

many english words originally did use all letters in a word. however due to languages shifting with a population many sounds in some words fell out of favor. for example when i give someone my name in writing, they read my name then literally use different word sounds and make certain parts of my name silent. they read all the letters but due to spoken language not matching the written language it ends up being said differently.