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

Oh this is one where having to learn Middle English for my class on Chaucer comes in handy!

In Middle English (from the 11th to 15th century) the K sound **was** pronounced. So “Knife” was pronounced “K-neef.” “Knight” is another one, it was pronounced “K-neeht” in middle English.

The pronunciation of a lot of words have changed over time but written English often didn’t change to reflect the new ways words were being pronounced. So English spellings retained some weird leftovers like that.