Why does the French language have so many words with useless letters?
In: Culture
First of all, french is special because there is actually an institution (l’Académie Française) in charge of determining the “correct” spelling. Whether this is useful or even desirable is another matter, but the truth is that they changed a lot of stuff over the years for various reasons.
For example, “doigt” which is french for “finger”, got a completely useless “g” added in the middle of it to remind its latin origin “digitus”.
“Temps” (time) got a similar treatment with an added “p” to remind “tempus”.
When I was a kid, I got told that the reason why the endings of some verbs are so complex is because the people who were able to write got paid “by the letter”, so they had an interest in adding useless letters.
But a quick google search didn’t confirm this story so I am not sure about that.
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