<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: Bridge Notching Trouble ('knife' - spelling)</title></head><body> <div><font face="Times New Roman">At 8:09 PM -0500 8/11/02, Erwinspiano@aol.com wrote:</font></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" color="#000000">    Stray thought. Why does the word knife have a K on the front of it any way.</font></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><font face="Arial" color="#000000" >           Dale Erwin</font></blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Hi Dale,</div> <div><br></div> <div>Because the word comes from the Old English 'cnif' (earliest known usage was during the 11th century). As with modern Italian, in Old English every letter was pronounced. English language speakers have become lazier, dropping the initial letter of certain letter combinations that are difficult to sound together when speaking but retaining them in the written word.</div> <div><br></div> <div>At the same time as the word appeared in Old English, it also occurred in Middle Low German (knif), Old Norse (knif), Dutch (knijf) and Danish (kniv). As these languages all stem from the same Indo-European family of languages, our modern word 'knife' could have come from any of them.</div> <div><br></div> <div><font color="#0000FF">(just to absolve myself from being credited with any real knowledge in this area, this contribution to the list comes compliments of my wife Kristie, who's area of specialty is linguistics and myths and legends)</font></div> <div><br></div> <div>Ron O.</div> <x-sigsep><pre>-- </pre></x-sigsep> <div>_______________________<br> <br> OVERS PIANOS - SYDNEY<br> Grand Piano Manufacturers<br> <br> Web: http://overspianos.com.au<br> mailto:info@overspianos.com.au<br> _______________________</div> </body> </html>