Why do people bother with silent letters?
When it comes to spelling, why do we bother if we put the silent letters in? We don’t pronounce them, so why are they there in the first place?
(i.e. knot, debt, pneumonia, gnome, etc.)
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
37 Answers
Sometimes it effects the meaning of the word, i.e. Know and no. the spelling changes what the word means
Because not and knot are two different words.
Plus it’s funnier to leave them in and say them the wrong way in our heads. Puh-new-moan-eeuh. And I just love saying buh-log-nuh.
Plus it looks like the public school system failed you if you don’t include them.
It has to do with staying true to the language of origin of which the word’s root is derived from.
With something like “pneumonia”, the root pneu- indicates the lungs, so you can look at the word, not know the definition, and still know it has something to do with the lungs.
Just think how much harder it would be to write a 10 page paper if all the words were shorter. I say we need more silent letters.
@filmfann, yeah, the “e” is silent. Like the “p” in swimming.
Because most were pronounced at one time. Also, often times a silent letter determines how other vowels in the word are pronounced.
Redundancy in written language allows making minor mistakes. The reader will still understand the meaning.
Aoccdrnig to a rseearchr at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl
mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit any porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe
Topics: words, Americans, stupidity
Oh, it’s hardly an American thing. You should see the French at it.
“Les Francais sont encore pire que vous.”
“Le Franca so encor pir qe vu.”
I don’t think they should be considered silent letters. They are usually used in combination with other letters, and change the meaning or sound of that other letter. This happens in many languages. Hebrew, for example, has a whole set of diacritical marks that represent vowels. If I understood it correctly, they don’t have any characters for vowels, just these marks that tell you how to pronounce the consonants. This may have been an older system which is now being replaced by a system that includes vowels. Someone should correct me if I’ve got it wrong.
In spoken language, you can hear the differences in pronunciation that give you clues as to meaning. Written language doesn’t have sound, so it depends on visual clues. In English, we use letters that have other uses to modify other letters. It’s more efficient that way. We could have additional characters that serve as modifiers, but then our alphabet would expand and become more unwieldy.
I think there are silent letters that don’t serve a pronunciation purpose any more. However, they do serve to enhance meaning, because they are clues as to the derivation of the word. “Debt,” for example seems like it should be a shortened version of “debit.” “Pneumonia” is based on pneuma, or breath—a Greek root that, if you know it, can help you with any number of other words (pneumatic, pneumococcus).
In Greek, genomos means earth-dweller. Thus gnome tells us something about its roots. The kn cluster comes from Old English, where it was pronounced. It has not yet been removed as some other silent letters have, and as @gemiwing said, it is a visual clue that we are dealing with different words. Although we deal with a few other words that are spelled the same but mean different things just fine.
@stratman37
The victreay of taht setnaetmt is shawoemt qbentliosaue.
The veracity of that statement is somewhat questionable.
While there’s obviously some truth to this notion, it’s a bit of a myth that it never matters at all what order the letters have. For longer and/or less common words, leaving only the first and last letters in place does make the text impossible to read. You need to have enough information to be able to compensate for the fact that the letters are jumbled.
If you re-read the text you posted, you’ll see that most of the words are short and common. That’s another part of the reason why it’s easy to read.
OK, so write me a paragraph that I SHOULDN’T be able to read.
You’re on, @Stratman37! (Stick with this one, please. You’ll love it! Hint, my husband sells compressors—big ones, to major corporations, like Amazon, Boeing, etc. The compressor service techs (who are trained especially to work on those types of compressors) are supposedly supposed to put this sticker on the side of the machines…..Oh. And the parent company is based in Germany…
http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc207/Dutchcat1/Misc/DonttouchtheKompressoren.jpg
@stratman37
I’ll give that a try. This is hard work.
The ccoihe is wtih us slitl, but the czotiaiiviln now in jradepoy is all hmtinuay. As the aneicnt mtyh mrkaes kenw, we are credilhn elaluqy of the etrah and the sky. In our tnuree of this penalt we’ve aeclmtuuacd duraenogs elanuotroviy bgggaae — peoisnpeitrs for aogsrsigen and rtauil, sssmuiibon to lreeads, httloisiy to oetrsudis — all of wcihh puts our savvirul in smoe dbout. But we’ve aslo aecriuqd comoisaspn for orehts, love for our cerdlihn and dierse to lraen form hotsriy and epexernice, and a garet sionarg patsinsaoe igtelcilnnee — the caelr tolos for our cneuiontd savvruil and ppsstrorey. Wchih aetcpss of our nraute wlil pvariel is uacernitn, paarrcllituy when our vnoiiss and persoptcs are bunod to one slaml prat of the samll pleant Erath. But up three in the iistemmny of the Coomss, an icanbesplae pviscertepe atiaws us.
Read that back to me, please. And no googling the words you can figure out.
Odd. This is the second time you and I talk, and we’re going off-topic again. :P
Man, you got me there. Thanx for the legwork. I’m saving that one. And we’re not TOO off topic, are we?
Just trying to read that out loud, I got my tongue tied around my eye tooth and couldn’t see what I was saying!
@Fyrius Not global warming again!!!
@Fyrius @stratman37 From what I saw, the gist was to take care of the earth, we all have to share it, and our survival depends on it. It was kind of l like reading a foreign language…I just pick out the bits of words that I do understand, and then try to translate. Was I close?
Hahaha, you’re welcome.
The un-jumbled text is this. It’s part of a Carl Sagan quote. :) And it’s not about global warming.
The choice is with us still, but the civilization now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure of this planet we’ve accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we’ve also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence — the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits us.
I omitted the rest for the sake of brevity and headaches:
There are not yet any obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours always rush implacably, headlong, toward self-destruction. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. Travel is broadening.
Don’t you want to malign a malignancy?
No. If it means we fight again. I’m just stoked that we can joke together in another thread a day after we were at each others’ throats! Truce?
@Fyrius So….how did you get it jumbled? Just curious.
@stratman37
Hey, I never had any problem with you in the first place. Not even when I was lecturing you about objectivity.
I was surprised myself. Other times I would have lost my patience after two posts.
But I’ll gladly accept your truce, if you think we need one.
@Val123
Manually…
@Fyrius, thanx. I love the acceptance of the fluther community!
@Fyrius I read the jumbled one as- ‘the coochie is with us still’
May the coochie be with you!
Can I sneak a coochie joke in here?
Mom’s in the tub with her two year old, the kid sees Mom’s coochie and asks, “What’s that?”
Mom says, “Uh, that’s a sponge.”
Little girl says “Oh, yeah. The babysitter’s got one too. She uses it to wash Daddy’s face!”
@stratman37: If that was sneaky, I shudder to think about what might be obvious.
@gailcalled
Hahaha, seconded.
Maybe we need a dedicated banter thread so we can keep the other ones on-topic.
that is what we are taught to do.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
