Silent letter in English Language - Navo

Why don’t we pronounce the ‘b’ in doubt/debt or the ‘p’ in receipt?

• In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation.
• During the Renaissance, English scholars added a number of letters to the English words to link them to their Latin roots.
• A ‘b’ was added to doubt to link it to the Latin word Dubium debt to link it to the Latin word Debitum and a ‘p’ to receipt to associate it with recipere, which means to receive.
• Unfortunately for the English scholars, people continued to pronounce the words in the same way, effectively silencing the newly added letters.
• Latin was once a main subject taught in high schools until about 25 years ago so the links were more apparent, but now they remain silent.
• English can be a pretty tricky language sometimes. You might look at the word whistle and think, “What happened to that T and that H?” We don’t pronounce them. They are silent letters.
• Silent letters show up because English has a lot of  influences. About third of the world uses English. A lot of times there is a silent H at a beginning of a word it comes from a rule on French. That's why HOUR sounds like OUR.
• Silent Ks come from Old English, which was spoken in England before 1100 CE. They actually used to be pronounced, but over hundreds of years, the sound was dropped, leaving us with the words knife and knight, where we don’t pronounce the first letters.
• Sometimes silent letters are used to give us a clue how to pronounce things. If there is an E at the end of a word, it is often silent, but it usually lets us know a vowel that comes before it will have a “long” sound. This is why haze sounds like hays and not has.
• They are also called as Dummy letters with no relation to neighboring letters and no correspondence in pronunciation. Some letters are also empty letters which never have a sound, e.g. ⟨w⟩ in answer, ⟨h⟩ in Sarah, ⟨s⟩ in island, ⟨b⟩ in subtle, the ⟨t⟩ in ballet. These may present the greatest difficulty to writers and often to readers.