For A Change I Was Thinking... :)

[society]

My roaming mind was at it again - if a letter is 'silent' in a word, why is it added in the spelling of the word?

[sandyRoe]

Now, that's a good question. I don't know.

[boxtops]

sometimes, because they used to be pronounced, e.g. in Shakespeare's day

[Hypognosis]

So you can tell it apart from the other words which sound the same but mean different?

Whether the weather was wet would whet one's appetite for what?

[jno]

yes, in Chaucer's time the k in knife would have been pronounced (it still is in German words).

Sometimes they're just mistakes. Scissors used to be sissors, but the first dictionary compilers assumed it came from the latin scire and inserted the C. Same for the S in island.

[AB Editor]

To keep you on your toes :)

[boxtops]

...which should be pronounced Towees.... :-)

[Hypognosis]

Or, put it another way; words are shapes. The silent letter helps make the shape unique and distinguishable from something else.

Take it away and you may find yourself having to re-read entire sentences to try and work out, from the context, which meaning the author intended for a word they mis-spelled.

If you happen to like reading complex subjects and the sentences are convoluted and hard to understand as they are, this costs the reader a minute or so each time. Which is why pedantic people are always cross about sloppy spelling.

[boxtops]

Hear, hear, hypo ! :-)

[society]

Pedantic you say? Nothing wrong with being perfect. ;)
I like perfection, and a well learned person.

[Old_Geezer]

You don't need to be pedantic simply because you don't like errors. Using that argument one can end up not caring about anything.

[Hypognosis]

Thanks, boxtops. :)

@society, if that was a compliment aimed at me, then thanks also. Don't think I can do perfection though and wouldn't lay claim to being learned either. Learning, certainly. But don't we all?

@OG,

Typos are not a problem and easy enough to spot. It's the type of person who consistently spells particular words in a particular incorrect way, makes the reader do all the work of deciphering what they've mangled, accepts nobody's offers to correct their mistakes and insists that "the language is always evolving", to boot.

So perhaps it's not really about the spelling it's about the affrontery of people who you sincerely try to help but who throw it back in your face and tell you that their way is right.

[society]

@ Hypognosis *thumbs up*

[Quizmonster]

Are you suggesting, Society, that we should just spell words as they sound? That would be disastrous. For example, would you spell a type of sailing boat as 'yot' instead of 'yacht'?
Doing so would lose the whole history of the word which is from the Dutch word, jacht - bearing in mind that the 'j' was pronounced as 'y' - itself from the German word jagen meaning to hunt. Thus, the whole concept behind the word is of a fast vessel designed for pursuit. (In fact, in the north of Scotland, our modern version of it is still pronounced y + a + ch (as in Johann Sebastian BaCH + t, just as it originally was in Dutch.
All of that background would disappear with any introduction of 'yot'.
There are lots of similar instances, where words are as they are because of their origin, history and development. Long may that remain true in my view.

[THECORBYLOON]

HYPOGNOSIS if words have silent letters to indicate different meanings, why do some words have opposite meanings such as 'let' meaning allow or hinder?

[maurice]

"TheCorbyLoon": often because they stem from quite different words etymologically. Your "let" for instance in the far more common sense of "allow" comes from one Old English verb from which the German "lassen" also derives (French "laisser" comes from Latin); whereas the use of "let" as in tennis comes from a different OE verb. These you would have to look up individually (eg in Chambers): there's no general rule.

[society]

Quizmonster, I understand you point.

[Peter Pedant]

also shows the history of the word

some are mistakes or wrong - Johnson put the 'b' in debt altho it comes from the French dette rather than Latin Debitus.

Could got an 'l' to match would and should - even tho it comes from the Dutch coud

however in English the stress changes in a group of words
think ordinary and ordinarily- and spelling by ear would separate words which are related.

the 'e' in cake is not silent altho; we were taught it was -
it signals a vowel change from 'a' to 'ay'

[society]

Thanks everyone for your explanation.