Phil Cook v2 wrote:

> To put it another way how do you know they were silent letters, how many 
> voice recordings were there in the 17th century? Words such as knife 
> might have entered as the standard spelling because the k was still 
> pronounced at the time.

Except that it's impossible to pronounce that.

The only thing I can think of is if there used to be another vowel in 
there which has slowly vanished or something.

> Or it may well have been that 'everyone knows 
> knife is spelt with a k' even if it wasn't voiced.

As I say, I got the impression that this whole idea of words having a 
fixed spelling didn't exist until printing came along. Like, ask five 
different people and they'd spell the word five different ways. (And 
probably pronounce it differently too, come to think of it.)

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