From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!rhm Newsgroups: net.nlang Title: Re: "re: often" Article-I.D.: floyd.359 Posted: Wed Jul 14 21:00:05 1982 Received: Thu Jul 15 05:23:36 1982 References: watmath.2995 Indeed you are mistaken. "often" was spelled (and pronounced) with a "t" in Old English as far back as records go. No ignorant scholar had to intervene. The other claim recently of an ignorant scholar is also weak. No intervention was necessary to insert an "s" in the word "iland" which was also spelled "igland". There was a parallel word "isle" already in the language which had always been spelled with an "s" and derived (ultimately) from Latin.