From: utzoo!watmath!rvpalliende
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: island
Article-I.D.: watmath.2989
Posted: Sun Jul 11 21:47:59 1982
Received: Mon Jul 12 04:40:52 1982


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No. Island never had a pronounced "s".
"Island" comes from old English "igland", but the g was lost
some time. Some ignorant scholars thought that it came from
Latin "inSula", so they respelled the word and their mistake was
perpetuated until today. A less surprising spelling would be "ighland".
And anyway, what are silent letters useful for? I always was taught
that "often" was pronounced "ofn", but here in Ontario many people
pronounce the "t". Is it an archaism, or simply a mispronunciation
due to the spelling?
And there are people who think that you should pronounce the "d"
in Wednesday. They would benefit from a (very simple) spelling reform
which would only change the few hundred words whose silent letters
aren't pronounced by educated speakers. This means: Wednesday should
be Wenesday (or Wensday) but we should ask some expert
(linguist?, statistician?, Canadian?)  before deciding that "often"
should be "ofen".
And ov course, government should continue to have the N, until the
last educated N keeper dies.