"Phil Cook v2" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote in message
news:op.vfqbd2vrmn4jds@phils...
> And lo On Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:27:07 +0100, John VanSickle
> <evi### [at] hotmailcom> did spake thusly:

> >> 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.

And then there's "ghoti"...

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