>>> Where the heck do silent letters come from?
>>
>> They represent sounds that existed in the spoken language at some 
>> point in the past, but which have since been lost.  I blame the French.
> 
> or the Germans, or the Romans, or the... anybody else who's had an 
> influence on the current version of English. For example "ghost" was 
> originally spelt as "gost" but possinly under the influence of the Dutch 
> their version "gheest" was used in a printing and it stuck.

Sure. But the Romans didn't have printing presses. And, as I say, back 
then words didn't have a set spelling; that only came in after printing. 
So that doesn't explain how a long-dead language can influence the 
spelling of a modern one.

> All good fun.

I wonder how long it will be before the OED starts listing words like 
"pr0n" as actual spellings.

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