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    Why Are There Silent Letters

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    Ahmed Razzaq
    The English language contains many silent letters due to its history of borrowing words from other languages like Latin, French, and Scandinavian languages. As these words were adopted, some of their letters became silent to fit English pronunciation rules. Approximately 60% of English words now contain silent letters. Examples like "knife" retain silent letters from their origins. While confusing for learners, silent letters can distinguish between homophones in writing. Some letters were also added silently due to the egos of printers and scholars rather than linguistic necessity.

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    Why Are There Silent Letters

    Uploaded by

    Ahmed Razzaq
    15 views2 pages
    The English language contains many silent letters due to its history of borrowing words from other languages like Latin, French, and Scandinavian languages. As these words were adopted, some of their letters became silent to fit English pronunciation rules. Approximately 60% of English words now contain silent letters. Examples like "knife" retain silent letters from their origins. While confusing for learners, silent letters can distinguish between homophones in writing. Some letters were also added silently due to the egos of printers and scholars rather than linguistic necessity.

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    The English language contains many silent letters due to its history of borrowing words from other languages like Latin, French, and Scandinavian languages. As these words were adopted, some of their letters became silent to fit English pronunciation rules. Approximately 60% of English words now contain silent letters. Examples like "knife" retain silent letters from their origins. While confusing for learners, silent letters can distinguish between homophones in writing. Some letters were also added silently due to the egos of printers and scholars rather than linguistic necessity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    15 views2 pages

    Why Are There Silent Letters

    Uploaded by

    Ahmed Razzaq
    The English language contains many silent letters due to its history of borrowing words from other languages like Latin, French, and Scandinavian languages. As these words were adopted, some of their letters became silent to fit English pronunciation rules. Approximately 60% of English words now contain silent letters. Examples like "knife" retain silent letters from their origins. While confusing for learners, silent letters can distinguish between homophones in writing. Some letters were also added silently due to the egos of printers and scholars rather than linguistic necessity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    Why Are There Silent Letters?

    The English language is notorious for its use of silent letters. In fact, about 60
    percent of English words contain a silent letter. But these often distressing
    words weren’t intended to be so confusing.

    Some people think it would be ideal if a language had one letter for
    every sound. Unfortunately, the English language has about 45
    sounds and only 26 letters.

    Many of those letters have more than one sound, and combinations of
    letters are often used to create other sounds. With so many sounds
    and not enough letters, it's even more curious that more than half of
    the letters in the alphabet are silent at least part of the time.

    Historians believe that early on English had very few silent letters.
    However, during the 15th century, many words from other languages,
    such as Latin and French, were added to the English language.

    Often these new words didn't follow English rules of grammar. Since
    their spellings were fixed, some letters became silent when
    pronounced in English. Today, experts estimate
    that approximately 60% of English words have silent letters.

    For example, the word "knife" could be spelled "nif" if you only used
    the letters that made sounds. Yet, it has a "k" at the start and an "e" at
    the end.

    Knife, and many other words with a silent "k" or "g" at the beginning
    (such as gnaw and knee), are Viking words.
    In Scandinavian countries, these letters are pronounced. In English,
    however, their spellings are retained while their pronunciations
    change, resulting in silent letters.
    While people trying to learn English may find silent letters frustrating,
    they can be useful. For example, silent letters help to distinguish
    between homophones (words with the same sound but different
    spellings and meanings) in writing. Thanks to silent letters, you can
    know the difference between two, to, and too!

    Other words with silent letters are borrowed from other languages. For
    instance, “tsunami” is actually a Japanese word, and “psychology” comes
    from the Greek words “psyche” (meaning spirit or soul) and “logica” (meaning
    the study of something).
    However, the consonant combinations “ts” and “ps” aren’t used to start words
    in English, so the first letters became silent so it would meet the language’s
    phonological rules.

    But there is one more factor that resulted in these silent letters: ego.
    Some people with influence over how the English language would evolve
    added extra letters simply because they could. Many printers who operated
    printing presses in England came from the Netherlands and Germany.
    Because they had control over a language that was, at the time, still not
    standardized, they added extra letters to have them resemble words from their
    home countries. In a similar way, scholars added the silent “b” to “doubt” to
    educate the (what they assumed was) oblivious public on the word’s
    derivation from the Latin “dubitare.” In reality, all they did was turn “dout” into
    “doubt” when no one asked for an unnecessary consonant.

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