Why does the letter ‘Q’ always needs to be followed my the letter ‘U’ for every word in the English language?

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Never understood this rule. Its the only letter that needs to be paired together. I cant think of any words that are just Q without the U. Why are these two inseparable!! I need to know why!!

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11 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Wikipedia desdass used QWERTY as an example of one of the 4 words in English that isn’t using a U after Q. They reaching 😭😭😭

Anonymous 0 Comments

The letter Q is largely an alphabetic revenant in modern English. It is among the least frequently used consonants along with J (for some reason?) as well X and Z, the former also being a revenant and the latter just kind of puttering around the edge of irrelevance. C is a revenant as well, and would do the world a favor if it went out for a pack of smokes and just never came back.

C on its own can be easily replaced by the letters K and S. The CH combination is the only time it holds a unique purpose, but it can be
substituted by a phonetically modified T.

The continued survival of the letter X is forgivable because it is a convenient compounding of the letters E, K, and S.

Q is especially annoying because, barring the rare instances where it performs alone at the end of a word, it is bound to the letter U. Which obviates the normal reasoning for retaining these relics, which is that they save time, space, or pencil milage. Where it cannot be replaced by K alone, it can be replaced by KW.

The place Q holds in the alphabet is mostly due to the influx of French into the English vocabulary following the Norman invasion of Britain, but it also remains relevant because of its frequency in Spanish.

Anonymous 0 Comments

it’s a shame English uses q even in native works that didn’t have q, like queen which in old English was spelt ‘cwēn’.

Anonymous 0 Comments

FYI, Qi is an acceptable scrabble word. However, as a scrabble player, I think q and u should be on one tile. If I get a u I always try to hold on to it, in case I get a q later.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It doesn’t need to be followed by U in *every* case. Qi doesn’t use the U after the Q. It’s even recognized by Scrabble as being a legal word.

Anonymous 0 Comments

There actually are a few: https://scrabble.merriam.com/q-words-without-u.
Others have explained why it’s almost always followed by a u

Anonymous 0 Comments

The ways sounds are formed in our mouths makes it hard to transition directly from some sounds to others; this tends to result in extra sounds being added in between. For example, it’s hard to go directly from an /m/ sound to a /sh/ sound, but easy to go from /m/ to /p/ and /p/ to /sh/, so when we add “-tion” to the end of a word like “assume”, the result is “assumption”.

The sound “q” makes* is similar to “k” except that you round your lips while making it, the same way you do when making “w” and “u” sounds. This makes it difficult to transition from /q/ to any vowel other than /u/; it’s easier to transition from /q/ to /u/ and then from /u/ to the other vowel. So all the words that had “q” followed by a vowel got “u”s inserted after the “q”. And just like we don’t have words that start with “ng”, we don’t have words that end in “q”; it’s *always* followed by a vowel.

*Actually this all happened thousands of years ago. “q” is indistinguishable from “k” in modern English, but used to represent a different sound.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

This is a leftover from Latin’s idiosyncratic spelling rules, which were themselves in part due to history even further back.

The Phoenician script had two separate letters kāp and qōp for the two separate sounds /k/ and /q/. When the Greeks borrowed this script to write Greek, they only had /k/, but for a while they kept qoppa, the Greek version of qōp, around to write /k/ before back vowels (/u o/) and used kappa (the Greek version of kāp) for /k/ before other vowels. After a while, they dropped qoppa and used kappa for /k/ everywhere.

Before qoppa was dropped, though, the Etruscans borrowed Greek letters to write Etruscan, and brought along both kappa and qoppa. Additionally, Etruscan had no /g/ and thus used Greek gamma (used in Greek for /g/) to write /k/ as well. When the Romans borrowed Etruscan letters, they had three different letters for /k/ – modern <c k q> – and used all of them for both /k/ and /g/, such that <c> was before front vowels /i e/, <q> was before back vowels /u o/, and <k> was before /a/.

After a while, though, the system was altered such that <c> became used for /k/ almost everywhere (and later the new letter <g> was made for /g/). The old letters <k> and <q> were thus deprecated, except in two circumstances: <k> hung around in a few fossilised words like *kalendae* ‘the first day of the month’, and <q> hung around before /u/ when /u/ was followed by another vowel (and thus pronounced like [w]). This <qu> spelling for /kw/ has been preserved in words borrowed straight from Latin ever since, and entered native English words through the French-based respelling English experienced during the transition from Old to Middle English after the Norman conquest. Thus, <q> remains in use, but the only environment where it appears is before <u>.

Note that there are words that are present in English dictionaries where <q> is *not* followed by <u>, but these are all loanwords from other languages where <q> has some other value (e.g. *qi*, where Pīnyīn <q> has the value /tɕʰ/!), and most of these loans aren’t really nativised in English.

<qu> is used in a number of Romance languages to write /k/ in some environments because Latin /k/ changed to one of several different sounds before /i e/, and then later /kw/ became /k/ in that same environment. Since the spelling of <c> for historical *k wasn’t replaced even when the sound was no longer /k/, this meant that <qu> was the only reliable way to write /k/ before /i e/.

TL;DR: Latin had too many ways to spell the sound /k/ because of the various languages that had used these letters before they got to Latin, and it ended up using <q> in only one specific situation.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In older languages, particularly early Latin, *C*, *K*, and *Q* could all be used to write the sound /k/ (represented in modern English by *C* or *K*), but which one was used depended on the surrounding letters.

Eventual Latin usage drifted to using *Q* almost only before a rounded vowel sound (represented by *U*), and that usage was inherited by most European languages. A few modern languages use *Q* alone for the old /k/ sound (as in French *cinq*, pronounced “sank”), but most exclusively use *QU* for /kw/ (as in French *quoi* or English *question*). English can still use *Q* for /k/ in shortened versions, as in *tranq* (from *tranquilizer*).