"Silent letters in words are just unnecessary loading screens"
Why is there a 'K' in "knife"? Why does "Wednesday" have that sneaky 'd' that nobody pronounces? Silent letters are like that loading icon that spins for no reason—they don't actually do anything, but they're somehow required.
Silent letters are basically legacy code in the English language that nobody has bothered to refactor. They made sense in Old English, but now they're just:
Let's call out some particularly egregious examples:
Knife, Knight, Know - The 'K' is just showing up to the party uninvited
Wednesday - "Wed-nes-day"? Nope. "Wenz-day." The 'd' ghosted us
Colonel - Pronounced "kernel" because English decided chaos is fun
Queue - Four letters waiting in line behind 'Q' doing nothing
If we removed all silent letters from English, would the language load faster? Would communication be more efficient? Would spell-check finally stop bullying us?
Think about it: when you read "knight," your brain has to:
1. Load the word
2. Process the silent 'k'
3. Skip over it
4. Continue reading
5. Store it anyway for spelling later
That's literally a loading screen in your brain. Unnecessary processing power wasted on decorative letters.
The funniest part? We could totally get rid of them, but we won't. We're too attached to our inefficient, buggy language system. It's like keeping Windows Vista around because "that's how we've always done it."