hello , can you folks tell me why we don’t pronounce the ( s ) in the word AISLE !!?
thanks,
It was reinserted by grammarians who wished to have spelling reveal word origin. From the On-line Etymological Dictionary:
[i]ISLE: late 13c., from O.Fr. ‘ile’, earlier ‘isle’, from L. ‘insula’, “island,” of uncertain origin, perhaps from fem. of adj. *en-salos “in the sea,” from salum “sea.” The -s- was restored first in M.Fr., then in Eng. in the late 1500s.
AISLE: Confused 15c. with unrelated ‘ile’, “island” (perhaps from notion of a “detached” part of a church), and so it took an -s-, c.1700[/i]
thank Mr. Micawber for your explanation 