Am Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:45:02 +0100 schrieb Invisible:

> 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.

It is possible! In german we have words such as

Knopf, Knall, knistern, Knüller

If you want, I could provide audio samples to prove that both k and n are 
pronounced without vowel between them in this cases (although I guess you 
could argue, that it froms a new consonant although I would disagree)

> 
> 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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