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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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.
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