Quite weird having silent letters in English words.
I mean, we know which ones are silent as a consequence of the learning process, which then normalises the words, but the concept itself is rather strange.
The "K" in KNIFE, "L" in CHALK, "B" in DEBT, "P" in PNEUMATIC etc.
Most are based on ancient adaptions, translations & pronunciations of borrowed words, but there are some examples where silent letters have deliberately been introduced.
You'd think that after centuries of usage, a more efficiently accurate way to spell words could be put in place (but not the phonetic way).
Nowadays, we have even taken to replacing words with letters & numbers, for example - R = ARE, U - YOU, 2 = TOO, T = TEA, 4 = FOR, 8 = ATE and you end up with message like "U R 2 L8 4 T".
Imagine how confusing silent numbers would be in arithmetic..!!
GG
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