From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!uwvax!jon
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: silent letters
Article-I.D.: uwvax.478
Posted: Tue Jul 13 14:18:52 1982
Received: Wed Jul 14 05:54:31 1982

Often and oft come down from Old English and are related to
words in other Germanic languages, all containing the 't'.
While the best plans of scholars go "aft agley", this is not
one of those cases.
There is no particular reason why the 'd' in Wednesday
should not be pronounced (there's no reason why it should, either)
since it comes from (older form of) Woden's Day.

Silent letters perform many useful purposes in English.
Besides the obvious snob value of pronouncing such letters,
their main goal is to confuse kids in grade school and give the teacher
a subject on which to waste unbounded amounts of time.  This prevents
the teacher from having to know anything about science or history
(the few times it comes up, he can fake it) or having to do anything
dangerous like teaching a foreign language while the kids are young enough
to learn it.
Silent letters also provide a nostalgic link with the past
and many hours of amusement as modern scholars laugh at the jerks of yore.
(This applies to non-silent letters as well. The s in sneeze should be an f.)