Eli5 : Why is q always followed by u in a word?
In: 1555
[removed]
[deleted]
After Normandy France took over England in 1066, it changed the spelling of many Germanic words to look more recognizable from their Latin perspective.
So English that were spelled with ‘cw’ changed to ‘qu’. For example, the word ‘queen’ was originally spelled as ‘cwen’ in old English.
German keck became Old English cwic became quick.
Old Norse kvelja became Old English cwellan became quell, which is the same root as kill.
“Q” makes a K sound because Kappa was originally the shiny new letter to replace Qoppa in ancient Greek. But Qoppa stayed around, but only to partner with the “ew” sound.
Many “qu” words are either going to be originally k/cw words or they will be straight outta Latin. All thanks to the French influence on English. *A French dynasty* ruled England for about 300 years. 😘 The government and royal court spoke Anglo-Norman French.
Since the top comment disappeared, I’ll add a bit.
Q is typically, though not always, followed by U for a couple of reasons. The first is due to the strong French (Norman) influence on English starting after the Norman invasion of 1066, basically turning English into how we know it today. One small change is that all spellings of the ‘kw’ sound were changed to ‘qu’ to match French. For example, old English *cwen* became queen, *cwic* became quick, etc.
The second reason is because of direct borrowings from French and Latin, both of which always use ‘qu’ for the ‘kw’ sound. For example, equal from Latin *aequus*, and equip from French *équiper*.
We can also see direct borrowings from non-Indo-European languages, as many Scrabble players have pointed out in this thread. Qi, qadi, faqir, etc. do not have a U that follows the Q, because in this case the Q represents a sound that doesn’t exist in English, so we use an uncommon letter to represent it. Then we approximate the sound with ‘k’ or ‘ch’.
[removed]
The only word in French where the q isn’t followed by a u is the word qat (which is also written khat).
Edit : there is also niqab and burqa although I don’t know if these two words are officially in the dictionary
Qu was used for the /kw/ sound in Latin already. This idea came from the Etruscans, who based it off early Greek who took it from the Phoenicians who used their original version of the letter for a deeper k sound (like the current usage in the phonetic alphabet or transcriptions of Arabic, in which case it’s *not* followed by u), which wasn’t present in Greek or Latin causing the redundancy. The romans used the q for various k sounds but everything but qu got displaced by c eventually along with k’s, the qoppa letter got displaced from the Greek alphabet altogether.
It’s not. It’s just the small handful are very rare and mostly used in Scrabble or are non-English-origin words that have crept into our lexicon.
Because Q is a natural diphthong, a syllable containing two distinct sounds, same as in “Oink”.
If there was no U after Q it would be a C.
The inventors of our alphabet were the Romans and spoke Latin. Words with “qu” come from Latin.
Romans got their alphabet from an extinct people called the Etruscans. The Etruscans invented a letter that was specifically for the “k” sound that’s before u. We think it’s because there was a slight difference in prononciation with “ka” for example.
Just like in English, Th can be seen as a variation of T.
The Romans took the Etruscan alphabet and that q before u rule with them. But in Latin, that happened to be a common grouping of letters because the sound “kw” was common. Hence “que” in Spanish or French, from Latin “quod” or “quem”.
Latest Answers