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Joined: Jun 2007
Posts: 1
stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jun 2007
Posts: 1 |
I've enjoyed reading your comments for a rather lengthy period of time. For this reason, I have at last, scrunched-up enough courage to ask a question. Is there any chance someone can explain to me, why "indicted" is pronounced: "in-die-ted" and by extension, we also have "indictment"?
Why the silent "c"?
Thank you in advance!
Signed:
---Baffled in Bermuda
Last edited by 1 of 6 Billion; 06/05/07 02:19 AM.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
and yet we have interdict, with the c sounded.
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Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 631
addict
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addict
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 631 |
Good question. What are silent letters for? Seeing as a letter is "a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech", the term "silent letter" is oxymoronic. Is a silent letter just the vestige of a former pronunciation, a kind of orthographical appendix? Edit: This Wiki article sheds some light on your question.
Last edited by Hydra; 06/05/07 12:46 PM.
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
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Good question. Like many that have anything to do with English orthography, the answer is not a simple one. The word came into Middle English from Norman French sometime after 1066. It was spelled enditen, and the vowels were all sounded as in Italian or Spanish. Somewhere between 1066 and the 1500s, there was a movement in Parisian French towards spellings that indicated the Latin etymology of words. That's were the silent b in debt comes from, (cf. the too-often pronounced t in often). Sometimes they got the etymology incorrect, as in admiral, sometimes correct as in perfect (originally borrowed as parfit) or adventure (aventure).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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And note that sometimes the intrusive consonant is pronounced in the "correct" pronunciation. Another example of an incorrectly etymologized intrusive consonant is the s in island. We're lucky they didn't go farther back with the bad etymology and decide it should be spelled insland.
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