“The rogue knight doubted that the asthmatic knave in knickers could climb the castle columns, but when their wrangle wrought chaos on the couple, the knight resigned with the knowledge that their tight-knit friendship wouldn’t succumb to dumb disputes.”
If you were to speak every single letter in that absurd sentence, it would sound a lot different than what you just read in your head. These aren’t even the most difficult English words to pronounce.
English spelling is famous for being illogical. In actuality, a silent letter can be found in around 60% of English words. Why is there a ‘b’ in the word “doubt”? Why do we pronounce “I-land” when we write “Island”? This problem persists with numerous more terms, including “knight,” “through,” “lasagna,” and “debt.” It is, to put it mildly, astounding! Why does the English language even have silent letters in the first place, with all this uncertainty and chaos?
The origin of silent letters in English
English silent letters emerged as a result of two fundamental causes. First, pronunciation changed as the language spread across areas and continents due to various accents and cultures. Second, as the English Empire grew, numerous words from numerous languages were “borrowed.” Most of the time, these words kept their original spellings. Some letters were silent as a result of this.
These silent letters were the product of several factors, including ego. Some persons who had a say in how the English language will develop introduced extra letters just out of selfishness. From the Netherlands and Germany, a large number of printers who ran printing presses in England were born.
They added extra letters to make them resemble terms from their native nations since they had power over a language that was, at the time, still not standardised. Similar to this, academics added the silent “b” to “doubt” to inform the (what they believed to be) ignorant public about the word’s origins from the Latin “dubitare.” In actuality, all they did was change “dout” to “doubt” as nobody requested an extra consonant!
Pronunciation Evolved Gradually
In the past, about 90% of “Old English” was phonemic, meaning that the words were spoken exactly as they were written. For instance, until the 16th century, the sound “k” was not pronounced in words like “knife,” “knight,” “know,” and “knock.” The same holds true for the letters “t” and “l” in words like “palm,” “calm,” and “almond,” as well as the letters “often,” “soften,” and “castle.” As the use of English spread over the world, different ethnic groups and people with various accents changed how some words were pronounced.
Some extremely challenging words consequently ended up losing some of their pronunciation. Particularly, consonant clusters presented a significant issue. These terms eventually started to be spelt with “silent” letters because the spelling of these words continued to be standardised.
The precise pronunciation of the ‘d’ in “sandwich” and “handkerchief” has been lost more recently. Even the ‘t’ in ‘Christmas’ has been consigned to the bench of silent letters!
Influences of Other Languages
The English language “borrowed” words from numerous other languages as the English dominion quickly spread around the globe. Significant spelling differences resulted from these various linguistic influences. The spelling of the acquired words was frequently preserved from the source languages. For instance, because it was directly imported from French, the term “quiche” is spelt that way.
As a Technique of Differentiating or Emphasising
We discover cases in which silent letters were deliberately added to words in order to distinguish them on paper from other words with similar sounds (homophones). The additional ‘n’ in the word ‘inn’ distinguishes it from the preposition ‘in’. In a similar vein, consider the cases of “bee” and “be.” In some cases, letters indicated which consonants in the word the reader should emphasise. For instance, the ‘fe’ in ‘giraffe’ suggests that the latter half of the word should be stressed more so than the beginning. The letter ‘e’ at the end of the word ‘ride’ is not necessary; rather, it directs the reader to lengthen the letter ‘i’ and distinguish it from the way we pronounce the word ‘rid’.
In conclusion, mastering silent letters could be a big challenge for someone trying to master the English language. These letters do have advantages, though. Others offer assistance in navigating the challenging and rule-bending waters of English pronunciation, while some offer an intriguing origin narrative about the word they correspond to!
#English #silent #letters