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And lo On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:45:02 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> did
spake thusly:
> 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.
As discussed such sounds are voiced in other languages we just 'lost' the
ability while retaining the spelling.
>> 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.)
Printing just allowed mass distribution and set a standardised spelling
system that way. It was copied from the hand-written/carved examples that
already existed. Tradition is a powerful force - if the German texts wrote
knife and the English texts copied that, then the print texts used that as
their cue; that becomes the way it is spelt regardless of how it is now
voiced.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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