Forum: ell.stackexchange.com
Tags: <spelling><letters-of-the-alphabet>
Title: What is the use of letter "Q" instead we can spell using letter "C" or "K"
Question: This morning my son asked me the following question that I was unable to answer:   What is the point of the letter  Q ? Why can't we just always use  C  or  K  instead?  For example, " Question " sounds like " Kwestion " and " Queue " & " Cue " both sound the same.   This question might be little stupid, but I would much appreciate it if anyone can come up with a good answer.

Answers:
sents: text: The short answer is that each word has its own history (also called its etymology ) that traces where the word came from.
text: The same is true of letters.
text: The word quick , for example, has in fact been spelled with a c and k in its distant past.
text: From etymonline.com :
text: Old English cwic "living, alive, animate," and figuratively, of mental qualities, "rapid, ready," from Proto-Germanic * kwikwaz (cf.
text: Old Saxon and Old Frisian quik, Old Norse kvikr "living, alive," Dutch kwik
text: "lively, bright, sprightly," Old High German quec "lively," German keck "bold"), from PIE root *gweie- "to live" (see bio-).
text: How we settled on quick instead of kwick is anybody's guess, but it's worth pointing out that very few modern English words begin with "kw-".
text: Somewhere along the line, "qu-" became the dominant form.
text: But your same curious question could be asked about words that begin with the Z sound, yet start with an X, like xenon and xylophone .
text: You can also read more about the letter Q from the same website.
text: I suggest you and your daughter have a look .
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/113/J.R.
score: 14
sents: text: In English, spelling has very little to do with pronunciation.
text: For example, the word tomato is always spelled T-O-M-A-T-O , regardless of whether it is pronounced toe-may-toe (North American English) or toh-ma-toe
text: (British English).
text: So to answer your question, no .
text: Question may sound like it could be spelled with a K , but the spelling is nothing to do with the pronunciation of the word.
text: It is spelled with a Q , and any variants such as "kwestion" are wrong.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/307/Matt
score: 5
sents: text: Ditto @j.r.
text: It's for historical reasons.
text: If I was designing an alphabet for English from scratch, it would be different from our present alphabet in many ways.
text: Yes, the letter "q" is useless because it could almost always be written "kw".
text: "Q" is also used when transliterating a sound found in Arabic, Hebrew, and other languages that we don't have in English, as in, for example, "al Qa'eda".
text: "C" is useless.
text: It either sounds like an "s" ("celery") or like a "k" ("corn").
text: Well, when followed by "h" it does create a unique sound ("cherry"), but I think we would have been better off to have a distinct letter for that.
text: "G" can have its unique hard sound ("good"), or it can sound just like "j" ("gentle").
text: Why not use a "j" when we want the "j" sound?
text: Etc.
text: If you're learning English, you just have to learn all these different sounds that the letters can make.
text: Yes, it would be better if there was one sound for every letter and one letter for every sound.
text: But there isn't in English.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/803/Jay
score: 1
sents: text: The child's question is justified.
text: But really difficult to answer.
text: The three letters c k q have something to do with the history of letters.
text: If we study the articulation of the k-sound we find slight differences between k+i, k+a, k+u.
text: The articulation of k is moved from a frontal position further back.
text: Semitic languages can produce a k-sound far back in the throat which sounds different from k and they used the special letter q for this special sound.
text: Somehow this letter got into the Greek and Latin alphabet and even into modern languages of western Europe.
text: I googled for "history of the letter q" and found an article of en.wikipidia on "q".
text: They try to make the adoption of the semitic q in Greek and Latin understandable but things remain rather vague and don't get clear.
text: So one might say q (always followed by u) might be replaced by ku or cu, but somehow we have kept qu, perhaps as a remembrance of the history of letters.
text: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q
text: There is an astonishing connection between the letters c k q g. c
text: is the basic sign.
text: In k a vertical stroke was placed before c and the half-circle of c was made angular.
text: In q we have the basic sign c and a vertical stroke placed after c and the stroke was placed into a deeper position.
text: And in g we have the sign c with a vertical stroke as in q with a little curve at the bottom.
text: The k-sounds and the g sound have something similar in articulation and the similarity of the signs shows this.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/4159/rogermue
score: 1
sents: text: rogermue has a really great answer.
text: I just want to add a bit of extra context for those who are not as familiar with linguistics in general (and with the historical linguistics of English in particular).
text: Languages constantly change in many ways.
text: One such way is pronunciation.
text: For languages like English that have had a literal form for many years, it makes sense for some older sounds (that are no longer used) to leave behind letters that were used to represent them.
text: And letters aren't only used to represent sounds, but to represent meanings as well.
text: Think about how we pluralize words.
text: We add the suffix "-s" at the end, but it doesn't always sound like an "s" as in cats.
text: Sometimes it sounds a bit like a "z" as in dogs, or it even adds a syllable (and sounds like "z") as in roses.
text: There are several sounds and "sound processes/patterns" that need to be considered for creating an alphabet.
text: These things change over time, and we end up with residue in the way we write that were likely completely logical at one point.
answer_details: author: ell.stackexchange.com/users/18574/ArmoredAngel
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
Question  may  sound  like it could be spelled with a  K , but the spelling is nothing to do with the pronunciation of the word. It is spelled with a  Q , and any variants such as "kwestion" are wrong.
Question sounds like a 'k' but this is incorrect. This relates more to history than pronunciation.