bdfinch (07/12/82)
yes, pronunciation of 'often' as 'OFF-ten' is a blunder. if i am not mistaken, 'often' was at one point spelled 'offen', but some 'scholar' somewhere down the line made the mistake of converting the second 'f' to a 't', and it stuck. there is no historical basis for pronouncing the 't', people do it because they think it sounds ritzy.
rhm (07/15/82)
Indeed you are mistaken. "often" was spelled (and pronounced) with a "t" in Old English as far back as records go. No ignorant scholar had to intervene. The other claim recently of an ignorant scholar is also weak. No intervention was necessary to insert an "s" in the word "iland" which was also spelled "igland". There was a parallel word "isle" already in the language which had always been spelled with an "s" and derived (ultimately) from Latin.