Knife why is k silent

I wonder why English has dropped that sound. Are there exceptions? Jtsummers on March 12, prev next [—]. Knight's origin in Modern English is the Old English "cniht" [1]. The 'c' was pronounced back then. Similarly, knife comes from Old English "cnif" [2]. It was satisfying, when I took a random Old English course about a decade ago, to find that my deliberate mispronunciations mostly to annoy the pedants in my social circle actually had a basis in reality and not just a Monty Python sketch.

English spelling is a product of how people used to pronounce words. So whenever you see "silent letters" it usually means they were pronounced before although you still need supporting evidence. Hacker News new past comments ask show jobs submit. These are only two of several well-known words in English that begin with the letters kn, where the k is silent.

Let's see if our friends from The Sentinel can give us any help. The English language mostly derives from the language of the Angles, who invaded Britain after the Romans left, so it's basically a Germanic language, albeit with French Romance additions courtesy of the Norman Conquest some four hundred years later, in Originally the k was pronounced - it's a voiceless plosive, made by blocking the flow of air with the back of the tongue and then releasing it.

The n sound is make by putting the tip of the tongue behind the upper teeth. The combination means the tongue is pretty busy if you say k-nife or k-night, and it's easier to drop the k sound. In English, the k sound before an n was dropped in the s although the k-n sound survives in languages like German or Dutch. However, by the s, printing had been developed, and spelling had, to some extent, been standardized; the spelling of words that start kn or gn, with its silent g still hasn't caught up with the pronunciation.

Although if it ever did, it would add some more words to the list of those that already have more than one meaning, e. Reaching for a sheet of paper he wrote a few words, then handed it to his friend. We could get rid of ''kn'' and ''gn'' and replace them simply with ''n'' but then how would we spell ''know''? If we dropped the ''k'' in ''know'' we'd get ''now'' which is already a word which is pronounced differently.

The reason that they have disappeared from spelling is most likely due to the fact that the sounds were gone by the time that spelling of those words previously having those sounds was standardized in Modern English. Personally, I like the current spellings as they let us know which is "know" and which is "now" and "knot" or "not" and so on. I've heard somewhere on the web that some Scots pronounce the ''kn'' in words like ''knight'', ''knock'', ''know'', ''knob'', ''knife'' etc.

So, if we got rid of ''gn'' and ''kn'' and replaced them with ''n'' it would work for everyone except for those people that use the dental nasals. For then ''kn'' and ''gn'' are diagraphs representing two phonemes different from [n]. So, is getting rid of ''kn'' and ''gn'' in a spelling reform really such a good idea then?

And similarly I've heard that some Scots pronounce ''wr'' as a rolled ''r'' and ''r'' as a regular ''r'' and pronounce ''wh'' as a voiceless ''w''.

So, then, is replacing ''kn'', ''gn'', ''wr'', and ''wh'' with ''n'', ''n'', ''r'', and ''w'' in a spelling reform really such a good idea? For some Scots ''kn'', ''gn'', ''wr'', and ''wh'' are diagraphs representing distinct sounds different from [n], [r] and [w] and don't contain silent letters. How would you respell this sentence if you were to respell it in a phonemic spelling reform? Nurp, We do not need to keep ''kn'', ''gn'', ''wr'' and ''wh'' just to favor a few Scots that use the dental nasals, a rolled r and a voiceless ''w'' distinct from [n], [r], and [w].

We should have spelling match how the majority speaks ''not the minority'' and so these distinctions can be ignored. We can replace ''kn'', ''gn'', ''wr'' and ''wh'' with simply ''n'', ''n'', ''r'' and ''w''. Oh, and here's my respelling of your sentence in a phonemic spelling reform. The Germanic languages gave English these "gh", "kn" words where "ch", "k" were once pronounced, and one theory I've heard is that it didn't fit into the Britons comprising the Celts scope of pronunciation; either they couldn't adopt it in natural speech or it wasn't aesthetic.

I'm not sure of "gn" - I think this is in part a Latin reminance that was generally always pronounced "ny" like in "gnocchi".