Why are silent letters like g in sign and b in bomb necessary?

Answer 1

English is derived from many languages, Latin, French, German, and many others. To understand why some words are spelled in what is seemingly an odd fashion, you should look up the entymology of the word. Many come from foreign words and retain some of the spelling from those words. Changing to spelll everything phonetically may help in some ways, but could also lead to even more confusion, such as sign (phonetically - sine) being confused with the triginometric function, sine, as someone already pointed out.

My take on this has always been to enjoy the richness of the language and find out where words come from. That leads to a better understanding of the meaning of words as well as better retention of how they are spelled.

Answer 2

It depends what you mean by necessary. We can use and understand the language better if we know where words come from, and how they relate to each other. The examples you give, for instance -
sign relates to signature and sounds different to "sine" if you speak clearly. English words have an interesting history - you can play "trace the ancestor", and words tend to be viewed as posher or more common depending on whether they were originally, latin, french, anglo-saxon or celtic. Your question leads to a vast area of stuff you can dip into or get completely absorbed in.

Answer 3

I'd never thought of that thefaz4371! It certainly makes sense. But with "sign" it would still need another letter "sine" - then of course there's the mathematical term sine so there would be confusion about what was meant - "The Sign of Four" or "The Sine of For":) I've never doubted English is a difficult language and I truly admire anyone that masters it as a second language.

Answer 4

"Sign" is one of these cases where the inclusion of a silent letter is necessary in order to indicate how the word should be pronounced. The "g" tells you not to pronounce the word as "sin".
English is a hybrid language whose words originate from a vast array of sources; some words' spellings (as in the case of "bomb") depend on the spelling of the word from which the English one is derived.

Answer 5

Because, if you dropped the silent letter from " a sign", it would be a sin.

Answer 6

I was told recently in class that certain letter combinations like "ph" and "gh", and probably the ones you mention, came about because writers at the time were paid by the letter and adding a letter where they could meant a little higher pay.