Why do silent letters exist.
Why don’t all letters just have one sound that is never changing no matter the situation.
Why do some letters, sometimes, sound like other letters that already exist in that language (J – H, Z – C).
There are plenty of weird quirks languages have (gendered words and other weird conditions) but these are the most non sensical to me.
I think a more complex but structured language with a lot of rules makes more sense than a simpler language that sounds made up on the spot.
I get that languages were first made for communication between wildlings but the things that i listed don’t make sense even with that context, plus they are refined over time
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Language is not governed by anyone, it reflects how people choose to communicate, which changes drastically overtime as quirks become accents and slang becomes common place.
Those silent letters weren’t always silent, and there are cases where those similar sounding letters differ. And many where they used to differ but then stopped.
Its because they are refined overtime that they become less logically consistent because no governing group is doing controlled refining.
I think it’s mostly because language isn’t designed by linguistic engineers.
Instead it’s a constantly changing liquid goo, transforming through the popularization of simple mistakes by communities of people. Even in places where someone tries to put guardrails on official language, such as in France, it’s like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon: futile.
Language gonna ling. And no matter how many “errors” accumulate, as long as people can be mutually understood it’s all valid.
TL;DR? The engine of linguistic change is linguistic fuck ups. This is why stuck-up grammar fascists are dorks.
What
It’s because languages aren’t designed by scientists and engineers. They evolve from different groups encountering each other.
I’ll give you an example. Why does English lack the fancy word endings and gendered nouns that Spanish has? Well, it turns out that Romans and Vikings and Germans all needed to understand each other just well enough to trade, and the language got simplified.
But then why do we have different words for “cow” and “beef?” It turns out that’s because the French conquered England and ruled it for a while, so French words were seen as fancier. The peasants raised the “cows” and the rulers ate the “beef.”
I think you’ll find most quirks with language come down to different groups of people coming together and working out a system that’s “good enough.”
These problems are not common in all languages. For example we have no silent letters in hungarian, and every letter has an exact pronounciation. We have no gendered words either. BUT we have lots of other weird rules, so missing those specific problems does not mean our language would be easy.
Often the reasons are historical, e.g. silent letters used to be pronounced in earlier centuries, just aren’t anymore. In French you can sometimes hear silent letters when another suffix is added to words. Languages also differ in how much they like to adapt spellings of loanwords; in German loanwords are usually still spelled and pronounced close to the source language, creating exceptions to normal spelling rules.
For the most part, languages were developed using distributed open source model with no moderation.
The result we have is common for such a development. Multiple forks (dialects), lack of internal consistency, suboptimal choices left right and center.
Most of these issues are pretty English specific, and it’s because English is the result of a mishmash of languages.
English language?? yes.
Other languages not so much…
Polish is a language where letters in words sound the same every time no matter of arrangement. There are no accent or silent letters.