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>>> 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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