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

English spellings reflect how words were pronounced in the early 1400s, or how the words are/were spelled in their language of origin whenever the word first entered the language.

The leading k in words like knife and knight and knee would have been pronounced in Old and Middle English, but various sound changes over the last 600 years resulted in people no longer pronouncing it. English spelling has been essentially unchanged since the advent of the printing press (perhaps with the notable exception of Noah Webster changing some American English spellings), so the words don’t look like how you might expect them to today.