Yes, the k in knot, know, knife, and knight was once pronounced. Alvaro in Dallas wonders about that silent first letter. The change is an example of apheresis, the loss of an initial sound. Old English had a pronounced initial consonant in words like knot, and an earlier form of knight sounded more like knicht /k-nikt/. The history is easier to hear in relatives of know, including Spanish conocer and French connaître, where that hard /k/ sound is still alive. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why Did English Stop Saying the “K” in “Knot” and “Know”?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Alvaro Michaels from Dallas, Texas.
Hi, Alvaro. Welcome to the program.
Thank you.
What can we help you with today?
Well, my question is, you know words like not and no, where there’s a K-N at the beginning, but the K you never pronounce it, right?
Mm—
Well, I was wondering, was there ever a time in English history where they did pronounce that K?
Yes, there was.
There was.
Yeah, it was.
Yes, indeed.
You’re absolutely right.
Well, in Old English, for sure, I mean, the word for not like the thing that you tie was knata.
Mm—
And over time, we lost that.
The linguistic process is called a pharesis.
-huh.
A-P-H-E-R-S-I-S, a pharesis, and it comes from Greek words that mean to take off.
And it means taking off the first letters or first sounds from a word.
So they disappear through some natural kinds of changes that happen as language is spoken over time.
And no, K-N-O-W, is a particularly interesting example because it has cognates in French and Spanish and other languages that come from the same root and they mean roughly the same thing.
So in Spanish, Martha, to no is conocer.
And this hard C sound at the beginning is still pronounced.
And in French, it’s, my French is, yeah, connaître, C-O-N-N-A-I-T-R-E.
And so they still have that hard C where, that hard K sound where it’s been lost in English.
Yeah, and there are quite a few examples of those, Alvaro.
Knight, like a knight in shining armor was knicht earlier on.
And you see that in a lot of the Germanic languages too.
Words like knife started with a K sound as well.
What got you to thinking about that?
Oh, I don’t know.
It just came to me one day.
Sometimes I just think about random things, and then that just came to me.
I just thought, well, I wonder if there ever was a time where you did pronounce that K.
There absolutely was.
Also, so I guess the same kind of process applies to words like nat, where there’s a G in front of the N, but you don’t pronounce that.
I’m not sure about the history of nat.
It’s definitely from a Germanic root.
They may come from different sources.
We also have the rock, G-N-E-I-S-S, right?
The type of stone.
That’s a type of bedrock, right?
Is it a volcanic bedrock?
Is that what it is?
That sounds familiar.
And, of course, gnu, which is so confused from all the puns and jokes that’s made in poetry that half the population doesn’t know whether or not the G is silent or pronounced.
Yeah, it’s really gnarly.
Because so often in the joking about these words, we pronounce them and then we get confused about which is correct.
It’s interesting.
English is a strange thing.
I call it a fractal made of Mobius strips.
It’s a strange little beastie with all kinds of oddities and historical relics.
And I don’t think I’d ever want to strip it down to pure spelling.
We could never agree on it for one thing, but also we’d lose some of that curiosity.
Well, we’ll talk to you later.
Thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Well, if you’ve got your knickers in a twist about something to do with language, give us a call.
That’s another one, right?
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