Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 18, 2024

Because we used to pronounce the ‘k’ but over hundreds of years the sound has simplified and the k is now silent.

That’s just good ol’ Crazy English like how “ghoti” can be pronounced as “fish” ( “gh” as in rough, “o” as in women, “ti” as in nation)

“Because of the universal rule of all languages: pronunciation is determined by what the native speakers determine “sounds right”.

Pronouncing the k before another consonant at the start of a word is deemed in English to sound silly, so it is dropped. The same for p in words such as psychology, and pneumonia."

A lot of English words have extra letters so that you can score more points in scrabble.

I could tell him the reason, but I like this answer better.

Let’s face it – English is “tuff stough”.

With all the time he spends kneeling, you’d think he’d have the knack for the knowledge to give to the knave with the knapsack, wearing a knit cap.

I occasionally buy Knorr soup mixes at the market; I say ‘norr’ while others say ka-norr. I always thought it was a Scandinavian thing.

Because spoken English was centered in London, but the printing industry was not. Guess who determined spelling.

To be honest, I wouldn’t know.

The French still pronounce the L+K, but spell it weird: canif.

The Oxford Dictionary of English says that the modern word “knife” comes from the Old English “cnif”, which was from the Old Norse “knifr”, which was of Germanic origin. So given that we don’t pronounce the initial letter now, why did we change it back from “C” to “K”??? Mind you, the modern Dutch “knijf” comes from the Middle Dutch “cnijf”, so there is a pattern there!

Gnome?

mother of Guru

I gnu this cartoon would create a controversy.

Very educational.

“Go ask your mother”: often in real life the default expression of insouciance more than a deference to higher parental wisdom.

Wall phone?

Mother knows best.

All of this has my head whirling!

He said to ask you.

In my childhood (about age 4), my mother would take me into our library, seat me before the 1928 copy of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (about 6 or 7" thick) and leave me there to answer my own question. I learned a lot !

Why knot?

To differentiate it from the word nife..

uh. . .becuz it’s ENGLISH. . .if yer lookin’ fer logic, ya ain’t gonna find it in THIS language. . .

Some guru. He went straight to the source.

For the same reason that in French, you can have a ten letter word and nine of the letters are silent.

[Modern] English, like most other languages, is a conglomeration of words and sounds borrowed from other languages — languages introduced by conquering tribes, visitors, and immigrants; borrowed from trading partners and foreign dignitaries, adapted from neighboring cultures, etc.

Why do the plurals of some nouns end with an “i” instead of an “s”? [Because those words didn’t derive from a Latin base].

Why is “t” sometimes silent? [Because over time, it became easier and faster to not pronounce it between certain other sounds.]

Why are there so many different sounds for “ough”? [Because we have more ways to pronounce vowels than consonants and more ways to pronounce them than we have to write them. Technically, a vowel is any sound with no audible noise produced by constriction in the vocal tract, and consonant is a sound with audible noise produced by a constriction. Vowel sounds are made with the open mouth, the different sounds made by changing the shape of the opening; consonant sounds are shaped very specifically using tongue and lips. And we were pronouncing the sounds long before we were writing them down.]

The really amazing thing about English is that it has become the language of science and one of the major languages of diplomacy.

Wikipedia has an article titled “Silent k and g”

A corded wall phone. He’s been on that mountain a long time.

Mom: The know all end all of the world.

I’ve got lectures on language and basically spelling became standardized and the spoken language just evolves and though the language police try hard to standardize it, it evolves. People tend to drop letters. Now that’s sumthin’!!

Would have saved a lot of time, and climbing! Plus, a landline!

Once upon a time K was used for a lot more words, but, during the war, K rationing meant we had to go without our K s. We just learned to make do, and now we don’t use K as often. Simple, right?

Because knives are sharp, and the K was threatened to stay silent.

Is saying ‘I don’t know’ that difficult?

Great article on this sort of thing at the Merriam-Webster site under “spelling and pronunciation.”

And why is the plural spelled with a “v”?

Knordic

Obviously because you hold it with your knuckles!

I always thought it was pronounced Ka-Niff-Eee. ;)

“You really have to k-now w-ho’s w-ho.”

I think the guru was supposed to ask his mother.

In France a pocket knife (as carried by English milords) is still a “Canif”

Moms know everything! And what they don’t know the answer to they find it out. Go moms.

Blame it on the Norse.

Because knights carry them in the day.