Why are pronunciation and spelling different?
75% of English consonant letters sometimes appear in the spelling of a word without being pronounceable. A common reason for it is that some spellings represent the way their word was pronounced in the past, later their pronunciation changed, but the spellings didn’t. Why did the pronunciation change? As a result of the natural evolution that all languages undergo. Why have the spellings of the words not changed? Because the invention of printing made spellings in general more standardized and fixed. Also, the influence of other languages matters a lot. In this case, the Greek and French impact on English vocabulary might be thought as most significant.
Mute, or silent consonants, are one example of the difference between spelling and pronunciation. Move to the next lesson to know about them.