Why is knee spelled with a k

Knesset noun : The parliament of the State of Israel. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! You can add my surname to the list. To confuse my English language students, I explain when first meeting a new group that my name — Knoedler — has two pronunciations. Maeve on March 22, pm temp, Have you read this post on the -ed spelling: Hummingbird on March 22, pm I have one, Knur: a hard excrescence as on a tree trunk : gnarl Hummingbird on March 22, pm Another three, knout: a whip used for flogging..

Think Mel Brooks. Sharon on March 23, am Thanks for the additions everyone, and for the additional info, Maeve. Jokenon on January 03, pm Ummm,is somebody here? Darcy on March 21, pm I notice that only one word in the list has the vowel U after the KN. Sahil on December 31, am What is the deal behind it whenever K sound comes before n it gets silent. Rajendra Vidyalaya on November 10, am Knife, knee, knights, knuckles etc are more to add in. Leave a comment: Cancel comment Name required :.

Email address required :. Why do we have silent letters in the English language? Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from experts and get insider knowledge.

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Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Already subscribed? Log in. The reason that they have disappeared from spelling is most likely due to the fact that the sounds were gone by the time that spelling of those words previously having those sounds was standardized in Modern English.

Personally, I like the current spellings as they let us know which is "know" and which is "now" and "knot" or "not" and so on.

I've heard somewhere on the web that some Scots pronounce the ''kn'' in words like ''knight'', ''knock'', ''know'', ''knob'', ''knife'' etc. So, if we got rid of ''gn'' and ''kn'' and replaced them with ''n'' it would work for everyone except for those people that use the dental nasals. For then ''kn'' and ''gn'' are diagraphs representing two phonemes different from [n]. So, is getting rid of ''kn'' and ''gn'' in a spelling reform really such a good idea then?

And similarly I've heard that some Scots pronounce ''wr'' as a rolled ''r'' and ''r'' as a regular ''r'' and pronounce ''wh'' as a voiceless ''w''. So, then, is replacing ''kn'', ''gn'', ''wr'', and ''wh'' with ''n'', ''n'', ''r'', and ''w'' in a spelling reform really such a good idea? For some Scots ''kn'', ''gn'', ''wr'', and ''wh'' are diagraphs representing distinct sounds different from [n], [r] and [w] and don't contain silent letters.

How would you respell this sentence if you were to respell it in a phonemic spelling reform? Nurp, We do not need to keep ''kn'', ''gn'', ''wr'' and ''wh'' just to favor a few Scots that use the dental nasals, a rolled r and a voiceless ''w'' distinct from [n], [r], and [w].

We should have spelling match how the majority speaks ''not the minority'' and so these distinctions can be ignored. We can replace ''kn'', ''gn'', ''wr'' and ''wh'' with simply ''n'', ''n'', ''r'' and ''w''.