[quote=Spiderkat]
Quote Originally Posted by Platinum
What do you mean he's wrong? In saying that they don't pronounce half the letters in a word? That's right, as far as I'm concerned. For example, the -eaux ending, that sounds like "oh".
And just count to ten:

...

Most of those have more than one useless letter. (not that english is any better, but anyway)
As you know almost all the words come from Latin or/and Greek and have a reason to have such spellings. Let me explain these you've mentioned above. But I agree some letters are silent, which by the way does not mean useless at all, and he quite exaggerated saying half the letters are not pronounced.
Here's some simple explanations.

un - the n is needed because it becomes une, also u+n creates a nasal sound and comes from unus in Latin
deux - the silent x is needed and pronounced for words made of it (deuxi