I also forgot about the early Dutch press operators that old Bill Caxton hired that gave us the silent h in words like ghost because that was close to ghast. And wh got added because they thought it looked better the the standard hw that was common at the time. Ok, that one is kind of a wash.
The standardization of spelling that printing presses require added a nasty list of silent letters to the English language that weren’t there before thanks to those early press operators.
It also didn’t help that English was standardizing its spelling as the Great Vowel Shift was occurring
I also forgot about the early Dutch press operators that old Bill Caxton hired that gave us the silent h in words like ghost because that was close to ghast. And wh got added because they thought it looked better the the standard hw that was common at the time. Ok, that one is kind of a wash.
The standardization of spelling that printing presses require added a nasty list of silent letters to the English language that weren’t there before thanks to those early press operators.