Thread by @FW_Medieval

daughter, half under her breath: why does 'receipt' even have a P?

father from HEL: *clears desk* WELL!

you see in the 16th century English writers were really getting interested in standardized spelling *and* etymology. People began to think a lot about "correctness" as applied to English for the first time +

Now English has *a lot* of financial and legal terminology borrowed from French during the middle english period. So words like "det" and "receit" have long histories with pretty stable pronunciations+

but in the 16th century people started thinking about Latin too much and realized that lots of English from French vocab ultimately comes from LATIN! So a word like "receit" comes from "receptum" and "det" from "debitum" +

so they're like "we should acknowledge the Latin origin of the word in the spelling! Slap that P in receit! Slap that B in det!"
"should we pronounce those letters?"
NO!!!!!!!! :D

with some words they got the etymology wrong (maybe?) like the position of "Controller" which was thought to have something to do with "Computum" like "counting" so they slapped a P in it: "Comptroller." In some places they pronounce the P and others they don't"

similar situation for words like
doubt
indict
subtle

they are post facto silent letters. They were inserted **as** silent letters.

in conclusion, English spelling is whack for several reasons. People deliberately effing with it is just one of them

Thank you for coming to my TEbD talk