Rex: Howdy! My name's Rex. I'm a Tyrannosaurus.
Tex: Howdy Rex! I'm Tex. I'm a pterodactyl.
Rex: Cool! We're both species of reptiles that start with a "T"!
Tex: Actually, pterodactyl starts with a "P"…but the "P" is silent.
Rex: Say what? Why would you put a "P" at the front and not pronounce it?
Tex: I don't know. It drives me crazy. No one can ever spell it.
Can you sympathize with the pterodactyl? Silent letters make the English language a bit frustrating. Why do so many words contain letters that aren't pronounced?
Some people think it would be ideal if a language had one letter for every sound. Unfortunately, the English language has about 45 sounds and only 26 letters.
Many of those letters have more than one sound, and combinations of letters are often used to create other sounds. With so many sounds and not enough letters, it's even more curious that more than half of the letters in the alphabet are silent at least part of the time.
Historians believe that early on English had very few silent letters. However, during the 15th century, many words from other languages, such as Latin and French, were added to the English language.
Often these new words didn't follow English rules of grammar. Since their spellings were fixed, some letters became silent when pronounced in English. Today, experts estimate that approximately 60% of English words have silent letters.
For example, the word "knife" could be spelled "nif" if you only used the letters that made sounds. Yet, it has a "k" at the start and an "e" at the end.