Why Is The Letter "Q" Almost Always Followed By The ... - The Guardian

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Peter Ford, Birmingham, United Kingdom

• The letter "Q" is always followed by the letter "U" in Spanish too. In this language "LL" and "CH" are no longer considered as a single letter.

  Antonio, Bariloche Argentina

• Probably. There certainly are combinations which are, or have been, treated as single characters, in English. Older books will often have "ae" printed as a single, overlapped character, for example. Some, such as "th", kept their sound but were split up in writing, in early efforts to simplify the writing system. (Phonetic spelling systems in early Europe used between 30 to 90 characters. One big reason that nobody back then could read or write is that nobody had time to learn.)

  John White, Stockport UK

• Our use of the letter Q comes from its presence in words with a Latin origin. The Latin alphabet derives, through Greek, from that of the Phoenicians, a semitic people related to Arabs and Hebrews. In that alphabet, the letter Q, called Quf, has approximately the sound of the consonantal letter C, made farther back in the throat than K. There is evidence that, for a time, the Romans used Q and C interchangeably with a following U ("cum"[with] and its antique spelling "qum"; "qui" [who] and its dative "cui"); before restricting it to consonantal U (the "w" sound), as in "quaero", "quinque", etc. The use of qu- in "quell", although a variant of "kill", from a Germanic origin, is simply based on the prevalent latinate models. As for QU being a separate letter, you might as well ask if Q deserves being considered a letter at all, since without its U, the dictionary entries for it amount to "Q", "qibla" and a handful of abbreviations and sundry terms, mostly Arabic in origin.

  John Bennett, Glasgow, UK

• If "Qu" is to be considered a single letter, then English would require a new letter for writing words like "Iraq" and "Qatar."

  Jesse Jace, Minneapolis, USA

• In Welsh the following combinations are considered as single letters: CH, DD, FF, NG, LL, PH, RH, TH.

  Gareth, Bodffordd, Wales

• In most languages where you find Q without U, the language is normally written in a different alphabet from ours, and the Q represents a sound further back in the mouth than our K. The Australian airline Qantas is an acronym for Queensland And Northern Territories Air Service. The ancient Gothic language used an alphabet based partly on Greek, and partly on our Roman one. It used Q without U to represent the kw combination. E.g. qiman (pronounced quiman) = to come

  Neil Copeland, Dunedin New Zealand

• QI is allowable in english scrabble. It has been used in the last 10 games I played, as it's excellent on bonus points squares if you get a Q near the end of the game and need to get rid of it. I think QIT and QIF are the only others without a U that are permissible but I may be wrong.

  Jon Chubb, Nottingham UK