what's the point in having silent letters eg. knife, gnome, knowledge?

Answer 1

To keep our American friends on their toes.

Answer 2

I asked my own stupid question and I need some points... otherwise I think you already got you a better answer than I could give. These letters are actually not silent but speak to us of the history of words. How did this word come to English? I had a friend the other day telling me about the consonant clusters in English being so difficult. He speaks Spanish. There are relatively few of them in his tounge. Noche is just like it is spelled. There is no knoche that rides to battle windmills. And, speaking of the sound (or absence thereof) how about nait for night: Good nait!
Get yourself a good dictionary an have an adventure. Words have come to English from all over the world. And, many brought with them their own baggage. Some where made worse by their English replacements.

Answer 3

The writing of such words got preserved fully or partially since Ancient or Old English, while pronunciation changed. For example, silent "e" in the end of words. When I was starting to learn English my teachers just explained that presence of such an "e" serves to show that the previous syllable is "open" (ending with a vowel), as the "e" "takes" the consonant in between them to itself. E.g. "not" is a closed syllable, while "no-te" is still pronounced as one syllable, but already an open one.
Later, in "History of English" we found out that on the early stages the words that now have that silent "e" had an "n" after them. With the course of time the "n" "got lost", but there was still the necessity to keep the first syllable "open" in order to differentiate between different words (like in the example - in order for "noten" not to become "not"). Hence, we have the silent "e" to think about.

If you find an Etymological dictionary, you will find many examples.

Answer 4

For the most part, the silent letters in English are signs of how a word used to be pronounced. You can sometimes see this by looking at related words in German or Dutch: for instance, knight in German is "Knecht," pronounced something like k'nect. In older forms of English, "knight" was likely pronounced in a similar way--as something like "k'nigt" (see the "silly English k'niggets" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail).

Sometimes silent letters do have a function, though--the silent "e" in words like "bite" and "hate" indicates a long vowel, for instance. Other times the letters are silent in one form of a word but not the other--"damn" versus "damnation." But mostly all those silent letters just represent the way English was spoken about eight hundred years ago.

Answer 5

because of the fact the others have already referred to, the silent letters was once reported in older styles of English... today, the numerous silent letters serve a purpose of indicating vowel length, enormously the appropriate silent E. in case you notice, in lots of words that have an fairly final ending like , the 1st vowel is long. for occasion, interior the be conscious "shame," the appropriate E is silent and the A is long. In a simliar be conscious with out the appropriate E, "sham," the A isn't long. indexed below are some others (no longer in IPA, yet with the pronunciation conventional of English dictionaries) sham /shæm/ -- shame /sh?m/ cap /kæp/ -- cape /k?p/ holiday /holiday/ -- tripe /tr?p/

Answer 6

The spelling system of English was created hundreds of years ago, back when the pronunciation was different. At that time, the spelling reflected the pronunciation pretty well. In the meantime, the pronunciation has changed, but the spelling hasn't. That's why we have silent letters.

Answer 7

I don't know '''"What's the point of having silent letters e.g. knife, gnome, knoweldge?"

...sorry I was waiting for the punch line, I thought it was a joke???

Answer 8

To make English teachers earn their pay. Half the questions on Yahoo wouldn't be so much fun if we didn't bicker about spelling and grammar...

Answer 9

It's word differenciation:

Knight or Night?
Knob or Nob?

:o))

Answer 10

it seems that they will go away in Europe, they want to change a bit the English language...