Whether or not a letter is silent literally only matters when speaking/listening. Back in the day, writing was a reflection of what was spoken but in the past f

Whether or not a letter is silent literally only matters when speaking/listening. Back in the day, writing was a reflection of what was spoken but in the past few centuries of orthography reform and standardization the written form has become canonical. By silent e I mean to refer to the lack of an additional syllable after the last consonant e.g. faro/loin/far, davanti/devant/before, via/voie/weye As for Chinese, I don't imagine they measured information density per brushstroke 𠔻𠔻𠔻