scott wrote:

> I don't see what the 
> printing press has to do with anything, people still spoke and wrote 
> before that!

To reiterate: Apparently before the invention of the printing press, 
words didn't have standard spellings. People just wrote them down 
however seemed right at the time, making up the spellings as they went 
along. It's only when printing started the mass dissemination of written 
material that words acquired fixed spellings. So it's only after this 
point in time that silent letters could have survived.

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