it's mostly Americans who don't pronounce the d in Wednesday; to most British people it's more of 'Wends-day' than anything else. Wednesday has Germanic linguistic origins. It is derived from the Old English word, Wōdnesdæg, which honours the Germanic god Wodan.
Why is there a D on Wednesday? Presumably you are referring to the first 'd' and not the second one. The answer is that the day was named for Woden (also spelt Wodin), another name for Odin Allfather, the chief Norse god. Through the process of elision, the name 'Woden's day' became, over time, 'Wednesday'.
So where did this d come from? And why don't we pronounce it? As it turns out, Wednesday actually has Germanic linguistic origins. It is derived from the Old English word, Wōdnesdæg, which honors the Germanic god Wodan.
Wednesday is just one example of words — like February and ptarmigan — where letters appear in a word's spelling but not in its pronunciation. The curious case of America's silent "d" doesn't extend to parts of England, Scotland and India, where many people enunciate the letter.
it's mostly Americans who don't pronounce the d in Wednesday; to most British people it's more of 'Wends-day' than anything else. Wednesday has Germanic linguistic origins. It is derived from the Old English word, Wōdnesdæg, which honours the Germanic god Wodan.
The correct pronunciation of "Wednesday" is "WENZ-day." The "d" in the middle of the word is silent, so it is commonly pronounced without sounding the "d" separately.
The letter ⟨k⟩ is normally silent (i.e. it does not reflect any sound) when it precedes an ⟨n⟩ at the beginning of a word, as in “knife”, and sometimes by extension in other positions.
Most dictionaries consider the first r to be silent, although they also consider it correct to pronounce it with the r. Presumably it is silent because it is awkward to say.
