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 1 2 3 4 5 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.