What is the point of having silent letters when we dont sound them out?

Answer 1

Actually, there are many cases where silent letters do tell us SOMETHING about how to pronounce the word. But they also serve other purposes, such as showing us the history of the word and other words that it is related to. (Actually, the assumption that THE purpose of spelling is to indicate how a word is pronounced is not quite accurate. Spelling often serves other purposes.)

The explanation of WHY we have these silent letters has two major parts -- one has to do with the ORIGINS of the words, the other with why we ended up KEEPING the letters once they had become 'silent.

ORIGINS: Silent letters are largely the result of:

a) changes in pronounciation AFTER the spelling was established (e.g., in OLD English the k and gh of 'knight' were pronounced, as the related German word "Knecht" continues to pronounce them). The changes may be large ones where entire sounds are lost to the language (like the loss of the /gh/ sound of Old English), or small shifts from things like where the accent falls in a word (which is the origin of many chnages in vowel sound, including silent vowels).

b) borrowing words from MANY different languages with different spelling conventions and/or with distinctions that may not exist (and so ultimately are lost) in English.

c) trying to use the Latin alphabet which lacks single letters for many sounds found in English (esp. vowel sounds)

So in most cases, those who established the spelling of English words did not intentionally include silent letters! And the 'decision' to keep the old spelling after the pronunciation changed was usually tradition/habit. Nevertheless, keeping the older spellings DOES

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"Purposes" (or values) in silent letters:

1) The 'magic e' of words like "cane" and "code" --originally it was pronounced separately (so that they would have an extra syllable -- e.g., "tone" would sound like /TO-nuh/.) But then the unaccented short e ended up being dropped in speech. Yet the "silent" (or "magic" e) turned out to be useful to keep. Now it helps to mark the first vowel as "long" (and so to distinguish these words from "can" and "cod"). Some prefer not to label this use of e as "silent e" because it DOES have an effect on the pronunciation.


Something similar might be said for doubled letters -- technically only one is pronounced, but the doubling helps to mark the preceding vowel as short. Compare 'hoped' (with the 'magic e') and 'hopped' (with the double consonant).

2) Help us distinguish words that sound the same: night/knight, in/inn, lent/leant.

3) Silent letters may keep a record of part of the word's history. Keeping the spelling may help to show us relationships between words: when 'soft' adds '-en' (-> soften) the 't' become silent, but we can see that the words are related (cf. haste > hasten; oft > often; fast [meaning 'secure'] > fasten; nest > nestle); lean > leant (not 'lent'); in other cases, the suffixed form pronounces a letter that is silent in the simple form damn (with silent n) > damnable; vehicle (silent h) > vehicular (restores the h because it is in the accented syllable). Incidentally, learning words as PAIRS or clusters (soft WITH soften) can make it much easier to get the correct spelling for the one with a silent letter

This is also useful when learning foreign languages (like learning to read French or German and RECOGNIZING related English words from the spelling) or other English words borrowed from foreign languages.

4) Some letters are commonly silent in certain English dialects, not in others (e.g., initial h- or final -r); keeping the same spelling, even if our own dialect treats a letter as silent makes it possible for us to communicate across English dialects. (These dialectal/accent differences, by the way, are a MAJOR barrier to "spelling reform", because it would only really work for some groups, and make the written word totally confusing and non-phonetic for many others.)

Answer 2

Silent letters are wonderful because they are clues to the origin of the words! In K-night and K-nife, those ks used to be pronounced. You've heard monty python talk about "KaNiggits?" knights....

Answer 3

It's the English Language. One of the most complicated in the world. There are numerous exceptions to rules of grammar. Unfortunatley, it really doen't help people learn the language. There honestly is no really good reason for these silent letters, unfortunatley.

Answer 4

The reason is that while English has changed over time, its spelling is basically still medieval.

Answer 5

I love you! Thank you for asking this question! Been trying to figure this one out my entire life!

Answer 6

I wouldn't no.