And lo On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:32:25 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake thusly:

>> 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.
>
> Why couldn't words have been spelt before printing presses with silent  
> letters?  It's probably precisely the fact that words were spelt in many  
> ways that led to some unusual spellings becoming "standard".

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

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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