Why are there silent letters in English words? - Big Questions - (Ep. 42)

A weekly show where we endeavor to answer one of your big questions. This week, morgana7544 asks, "Why are there silent letters in English words?"
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[WillGetBetter]

Whoever added the b in subtle deserves an award

[HelenaeCat]

False! It's because English secretly wants to overtake French in who has the worse spelling system!

[curtisgibb]

So, the taunting French guy was correct!  "You silly English Kah-nigit!"

[dator]

It's pretty fun being able to speak two languages related to eachother. For me it's Swedish and English. since both languages are related we can find some fun similarities that have changed through history.
Example, the Swedish word for knife is 'kniv' where the k is vocal. Making the k vocal in knife and dropping the e, they become really similar!
Same goes for knight, which in Swedish becomes knäkt. If you can pronounce ä it becomes pretty easy to see how similar the two words really are (if you also make the k vocal in knight)

[ablestmage]

The basic answer is that it caught on. All of the words you know and love are there because of popularity. There's not a shadowy cabal of people who decide how to spell words, but rather a body of researchers called lexicographers that study how often the ordinary person uses words (via magazines, letters, novels, etc) and then document those how-oftens. The most popular ways stick, and the dictionary is basically a list of the most popular ways observed -- not a limitation on how they're allowed to be spelled, but simply most frequently observed to be spelled that way. Sometimes a group like the scholars mentioned at 2:05 will try to force people to try to spell things a certain way as a status symbol or an impression of what should be correct, but it ultimately boils down to whether it simply catches on and becomes popular enough, regardless of who said it should be spelled that way.

[pipermeloche]

This is probably one of the most interesting episodes so far

[SlyPearTree]

My first language is French and although I knew about silent letters, we do have them in French too, I now realize that I have been pronouncing some English words wrong. I've even been hearing those words wrong because my vocabulary mostly come from reading and my brain substitutes what I think some words should sounds like instead of what they actually sounds like.

[jomoser]

English is like: "Spell it 'queue' but it's sounds like 'Q' HAHA!"

[youngmatthias]

"Psychology" and "asthma" actually have pronunciations because English has constraints on what consonant clusters are allowed and which aren't. So in Greek, "ps" is an allowed consonant cluster, and Greek speakers pronounce both, but in English, "ps" is not an allowed cluster, nor is "sth, " so when we first borrowed these words, we spoke them with an accent, i.e. trying to pronounce the words as close to correct as possible without violating any of our constraints. After time, as the words became standard English words rather than simple borrowings, the pronunciations stuck, and thus we have the silent letters.

[ladydevlish]

Language economy - the tendency of speech to say as many things with as little possible material (letters) - also plays a role. In Slavic languages circumflexes came to be as a way to use less letters for a sound. Example: english sh, German sch, Slovene š. :)

[inkbotkowalski]

English used to have a lot more/different sounds, too, and some spellings reflect past efforts to write these down. At some point the "gh" sound, for example, indicated a sound that's still present in modern day German and Scandinavian languages, a sort of hiss like a cat would make.
If you keep that in mind, the older pronunciation of "knight" reveals its kinship with German "Knecht", which can be a sort of vassal or servant, or a mercenary. The word took on a derogatory meaning in German, whereas in English, it acquired more positive connotations.

[Narnendil]

When all the letters in knight is pronounced, it sounds a bit more like the Swedish word (knekt) and you can easily see the Germanic connections :)

[missxxmissxx]

I will never forget when I missed a day of elementary school so I didn't know some of the new words they learned. When I came back we had to read in front of the class and I pronounced island as is-land and the teacher corrected me. I don't really know why I remember this specifically, maybe because I was always such a smooth reader when I read in front of the class and always took pride in never messing up or having the teacher correct me. I made sure to keep up with my work after that lol (sorry I ramble)

[SonaliMankaSingh]

How about why English is weird in general. Rough, through and cough don't rhyme. Kernel and colonel are pronounced the same. Why are there rules when few words actually follow them?

[eljohn]

It's worth mentioning that a lot of the silent "g"s you find are due to the elimination of the guttural sounds other Germanic languages still use.  Listen to a native Dutch or Swedish speaker and you can hear what they're supposed to be.  Or, better yet, look for the true Dutch pronunciation of Vincent Van Gogh on youtube, it's a classic example of the sounds English has dropped throughout its evolutionary divergence from other Germanic languages.  Finding the pronunciation of Gyllenhaal (actors) and Leeuwenhoek (father of microscopy) can be interesting examples of how sounds and spellings can vary from one language to another.

[pugglez]

What makes a food appeal to your taste buds?

[elizabethr]

Why are dimes smaller than nickles if they're worth more money? (Pennies being around the same size as dimes and quarters being worth the most and the largest of the more commonly used coins in the US).

[CoreyMSnow]

I always enjoy the language-oriented videos, this one was fun, and I learned a couple things!

[yousufa.]

My teacher told me that with some typewriters multiple spacing wasn't an option, so they would put random silent letters in words so that they'd take up enough room to move onto the next line.

[kcwidman]

BIG QUESTION IDEA!!!
Why does the metric system use metric tones instead of megagrams??? Mega (meaning million) refers to 1 million grams while a metric tone is 1000 kiliograms (meaning thousand, or 1 million grams. If we use the "Mega" prefix for thigs like megatones, megajoules, megahertz, megawatts, and megabytes, why don't we use megagrams in place of metric tones????


I would absolutely love it if you could make this a "Big Question" question, it would make my day! Anyway thanks for all the great content and have a nice day!
Ps.
Also if at all possible, could you put the upper part of the comment, with my name in the video or in the doobly doo, just so that I can prove it was my idea to some friends! Thanks!