Quinn from Excelsior, Minnesota, is five years old — well, five and three-quarters, as she points out. She wonders why the letter Q is so often followed by U. In Old English, the alphabet didn’t include the letter Q. The word quick, for example, was spelled cwic. The QU combination was introduced as a result of the Norman invasion, when many French words and language custom reflected the influence of Latin and helped create modern English. Latin, in turn, had been influenced by the Etruscans, whose alphabet included the letter qoppa. Two wonderful books about the evolution of the letters we use today are Letter Perfect by David Sacks (Bookshop|Amazon) and Michael Rosen’s Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story (Bookshop|Amazon). This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why is Q Followed by U?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Anna from Excelsior, Minnesota.
Hi, Anna. Welcome to the show.
Hey, Anna.
Well, I’m here with my daughter, Quinn, and she has a question for you.
I’ll put her on right now.
Okay.
Hi.
Hi, Quinn.
Hi.
What’s up?
My question is, why does a Q always end with a U?
So I guess with a name like Quinn, that always comes up, right? You always wonder, why is there a U after your Q?
Yeah.
Any guesses?
Well, not really.
I don’t know.
Well, first of all, tell us how old you are, Quinn.
I am five and three quarters.
Five and three quarters.
Oh, okay. So you’re almost six years old.
Mm—
Oh, that’s wonderful.
Well, that’s very interesting that you asked that question because Q is a very special letter. And you’re right. Q has a best friend and that best friend is the letter U.
So you see Q and U together to make that quah sound in your name, Quinn, Q-U-I-N-N. That’s how you spell your name, right?
Yes.
And you also see it in words like quiet and quick, which both start with Q-U. And there are very, very few words at all in English where Q doesn’t hang out with its best friend, U.
But even in those words, when the Q is away from the U, like in the name of the country Iraq, it still has a K sound. But it needs the U to make that quah sound.
Can you hear the difference between the kuh and the quah?
Yes.
So there are a couple of other letters that give us a K sound, the letter K, like in kick, or the letter C sometimes has a K sound, like in the word C-A-T. You know what that spells, don’t you?
Quah.
Quah.
Exactly.
Yeah, the C in that word has a K sound, but Q is a really special one that has a best friend that is the letter U, and that’s how it makes that qu sound like in your name.
So without the U, then your name would just be Kin and not Quinn.
Yeah, that would be a funny name.
That would be a funny name.
It’s better as Quinn, I think.
You sound like a Quinn to me, and I’m impressed with your spelling and reading abilities.
Thank you.
Can we talk to your mama?
This is Anna.
Anna, she’s fantastic. She sounds like a bright young thing.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, and she’s asking a question that actually has all kinds of historical linguistics behind it. So maybe she can call us again in another 10 years, and we’ll have a deeper conversation about it.
Well, that sounds good.
We will do that.
You two be well, all right?
Thank you.
You two.
Oh, she was adorable, Martha, wasn’t she?
Oh, she sure was.
And she asked a wonderful question.
She did.
We’ve given the explain it like I’m five answer. So explain it like I’m 25 answer is a little deeper than that, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s a little more sophisticated.
You know, back in Old English, in Anglo-Saxon, there wasn’t a Q in the alphabet.
That’s right.
You would spell the word quick, C-W-I-C, quick. And again, it was the French invasion, the Norman invasion, that gave us the Q and the U for a K sound.
And the reason that the French had the Q-U indicating a K sound is because of the influence of Latin, which used a Q before a U to make a W sound, like in quid pro quo.
And that goes back to the Etruscans because they had three different K sounds.
Yeah, so the Etruscans had a variation on the Greek alphabet. And they had a letter that is, a lot of people won’t know was a Greek letter because it was dropped. The Kappa, the Q-O-P-P-A, right? And that is where we got the Q.
So if you’re looking for the Q in the modern Greek alphabet, you won’t see it. But if you can get a hold of that Etruscan alphabet, you will see something that looks very much like a Q with a straight up and down tail rather than the tail on the side.
And there are a couple of really wonderful books that we can recommend about the alphabet. One of them is called Letter Perfect by David Sachs. And then there’s the book by Michael Rosen called Alphabetical, How Every Letter Tells a Story.
And both of these are wonderful books that actually tell stories about every single letter of the alphabet. And it’s great reading.
Well, we’d love to hear about your miracles of language. What’s the thing that you learned about language that you’d like to share with us and the world?
And, you know, we do love talking to kids, whether they’re five and three quarters or 105 and three quarters. Send an email to words@waywordradio.org or talk to us on that new fangled phone thingy on Twitter @wayword.
