Why do we need a Q? [Archive]

PsychoticEpisode

01-12-09, 10:16 PM

English : The letter Q has the same hard sound as the letter K or C yet we don't see words such as kween or cween. Why not? Q followed by u or K or C followed by w, both sound the same. Also, why do C's sound like an S at times?

Do we have more letters in the alphabet than we need?

cosmictraveler

01-13-09, 04:06 AM

The Chinese have over 40,000 characters in their language so no, I don't think we have enough letters . Let us add some new ones, can you think of any?:shrug:

temur

01-13-09, 04:24 AM

Щ, Э, Ө, Я, Ж

EntropyAlwaysWins

01-13-09, 06:51 AM

Theta could replace the 'th' sound in the.

Walter L. Wagner

01-13-09, 11:13 AM

The Chinese have over 40,000 characters in their language so no, I don't think we have enough letters . Let us add some new ones, can you think of any?:shrug:

The Mormon pioneers already did so when they came up with the Deseret alphabet. Lots of good information on that term if you google on it.

Fraggle Rocker

01-13-09, 03:59 PM

English : The letter Q has the same hard sound as the letter K or C yet we don't see words such as kween or cween. Why not?When we borrowed words from Latin and French we brought over their spelling, and they use the Q. Not that it's logical in French or Latin either; it could virtually always be replaced with a C in those languages. Eventually we started using the Q to spell a few native Anglo-Saxon words like quick and queen.Also, why do C's sound like an S at times?More Latin. In Classical Latin, C was always pronounced K. But there's a powerful force called palatalization that affects the phonetic development of many languages, if not most or even all of them.

When we let our tongue relax and then slowly lift it, it touches the roof of our mouth on the palate. At the opposite extreme are linguodental consants like English TH and velar or uvular sounds like Russian KH, which require using muscles to reshape the tongue and move it forward or backward.

So, over time a T or a D can slip backwards and become something like S, SH, ZH, or the more complicated palatalized Ty and Dy sounds of Russian. And a K or G can slip forwards into the same position.

In Vulgar Latin, when a K or G came before a vowel like E or I which moves the tongue upward, the K or G slid forward. In Italian and Romanian they became CH and J, respectively. In French and Portuguese they became S and ZH. (We won't talk about the Arabic influence in Spanish that broke the rule and turned them into the odd TH and KH phonemes.)

Even in American English (but not British) we palatalize the T in "mature" and "woncha go with me?" and the D in "educate" and "didja like that movie?" Chinese is full of palatalized consonants, which is why "Peking" is really "Bei-Jing." (BTW that's an English J, people who say Bei-zhing need a good map because they must think it's in France.) Japanese has a huge series of palatalized consonants. There are no such syllables as TI, SI, DI or ZI in Japanese, only CHI, SHI, JI and ZHI.

Anyway, English assimilated thousand of French words after the Norman Invasion in 1066, so the "soft C" became part of our spelling. You'll probably find that most of the words with soft C are of French origin (or Latin via French, or Greek via Latin), although there are exceptions like "ice."Do we have more letters in the alphabet than we need?Quite the contrary, we don't have nearly enough. English has more phonemes (individual units of sound) than Russian, and the Russian alphabet has 33 letters (I think, depending on how you count).

We have to use two letters to spell SH, CH and TH, and even then we don't know if it's the CH in church or Mach One; the TH in bath or bathe. We don't have any way to spell ZH, we just hope everybody can figure out the S in vision and pleasure.

We have only five letters for vowels, six if you count Y. Yet we have eleven vowel phonemes (again, depending on how you count). A has to represent the sounds in far, plate and cat. E is for set and complete. U is for up, flute and put.

We could reclaim Q and C and use them to transcribe two other phonemes, but we'd still need about ten more letters before we had a truly phonetic alphabet.

draqon

01-13-09, 04:05 PM

cosmictraveler

01-13-09, 04:24 PM

Z

Is my favorite letter for I'm always the last to know about something or to figure things out!;)

draqon

01-13-09, 04:26 PM

Z

Is my favorite letter for I'm always the last to know about something or to figure things out!;)

this thread is about letter Q....

cosmictraveler

01-13-09, 04:27 PM

I shall battle the Q with all of my vowels! :p

John Connellan

01-13-09, 06:58 PM

Theta could replace the 'th' sound in the.

I Θink Θat's a great idea!

temur

01-13-09, 08:08 PM

Also sh -> ш, and ch -> ч

(Q)

01-13-09, 08:45 PM

EntropyAlwaysWins

01-13-09, 11:05 PM

I Θink Θat's a great idea!

Thanks, it seemed like an obvious adaptation since its easy to write and its already pronounced that way.

madanthonywayne

01-13-09, 11:58 PM

tim840

01-14-09, 12:14 AM

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===||==||==>,,
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or for "th" "ch" and "sh" we could create new letters by combining elements of the former letter combinations (like this ^ one for th)

tim840

01-14-09, 12:23 AM

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'',,<==||==>,,
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^ new letter for "ch"

tim840

01-14-09, 12:31 AM

'''''''''''''''''||
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'-'_-,'''''||''''''''''''||
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^ new letter for "sh"

John Connellan

01-14-09, 12:38 PM

Dunno, I think we already have strange enough diphthongs in English writing such as "œ"

Fraggle Rocker

01-14-09, 03:56 PM

Dunno, I think we already have strange enough diphthongs in English writing such as "œ"You mean digraph, a combination of two written letters. A diphthong is a sound, a combination of two vowels or one vowel and one semivowel, like the "oy" sound in toy, boil, Freud.

temur

01-15-09, 01:47 AM

But there's a powerful force called palatalization that affects the phonetic development of many languages, if not most or even all of them.

Is there an opposing force for palatalization?

John Connellan

01-15-09, 01:26 PM

You mean digraph, a combination of two written letters. A diphthong is a sound, a combination of two vowels or one vowel and one semivowel, like the "oy" sound in toy, boil, Freud.

Ah yes, digraph, that's what I meant. "œ" is still a diphthong though

Captain Kremmen

01-16-09, 04:51 PM

Without a Q, there would be no computer password QWERTY,
which is unbreakable by any hacker,
and Ducks would have to Uack.

S.A.M.

01-16-09, 05:02 PM

Well Coran or Koran is certainly not the same as Quran.

Fraggle Rocker

01-16-09, 07:26 PM

Is there an opposing force for palatalization?Not that I've ever seen discussed. Palatalization is, after all, a simplification of sounds by relaxation of the tongue. Sort of verbal entropy.Well Coran or Koran is certainly not the same as Quran.It certainly is in English. Q is invariably pronounced "K" in our language. We don't have those uvular (glottal?) phonemes that Arabic and Farsi have. It's like the TH sound of English, Spanish and Greek. Not many languages have those phonemes.

Spelling "Koran" with a Q in English, to represent a sound from another language that we can't pronounce anyway, is just as much an affectation as spelling "Keltic" with a C, because Irish doesn't happen to have a K.

English spelling is hard enough for children to learn. We should not be screwing it up further by importing foreign words without normalizing their spelling to the few pathetic rules we have.

EntropyAlwaysWins

01-17-09, 08:11 AM

English spelling is hard enough for children to learn. We should not be screwing it up further by importing foreign words without normalizing their spelling to the few pathetic rules we have.

I completely agree with you, however, your plan would require effort and therefore unlikely to materialize. :D
Oh and on more or less unrelated note; have I mentioned how much I hate the US English spellchecker that seems to periodically reassert itself in my browser every time it updates. :(

Damn Zs.

Captain Kremmen

01-20-09, 06:02 AM

You could put a ck where the letter q is on the keyboard.
Then Muslims would read the Ckoran, ducks would ckwack, Presidents would be ckuackuaversal, and people would use the secret computer password ckwerty.

cosmictraveler

01-20-09, 06:07 AM

I've always liked "Q".

http://www.brunover.com/wav_gif/sttng025.gif

Captain Kremmen

01-20-09, 06:24 AM

Me too.
http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:N6bIc4RAwyO5tM:http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/anglais/Henry/bus-queue.jpg
A Bus ckyoo

draqon

01-20-09, 06:32 AM

Avenue Q: Q train: Queens

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/03/nyregion/080703_Q_Train_0066.jpg

Captain Kremmen

01-20-09, 08:18 AM

Re: Avenue Q: Q train: Queens

Don't the walls of the New York Metro have adverts on them?
If not, why not?

draqon

01-20-09, 08:39 AM

Re: Avenue Q: Q train: Queens

Don't the walls of the New York Metro have adverts on them?
If not, why not?

the outer walls on the other side of the tunnel (were passengers cannot touch the wall) do not have any adverts. Safety reasons, I suppose. I mean imagine some kid looking at advert and coming closer to see it better and falling inside on the tracks...ouch :rolleyes:

The inside of the tunnel, when the train is in motion has adverts that are displayed outside in the tunnel itself and look like a motion picture. Basically one looks outside the windows while the train is in motion and sees a motion picture advert of whatever being advertised from a series of pictures posted outside in the tunnel.

However these ads are never on the walls of the platform where people are waiting for the train to arrive.

The advertisement is rarely but displayed along the walls of the metro but only on the sides where there is not tracks in between ads and people viewing advertisement.

Furthermore ads are rarely but are on the center of the platform itself, usually in the center of the platform is this metal thing with the metro map and some advertisement.

Fraggle Rocker

01-20-09, 08:55 AM

the outer walls on the other side of the tunnel (where passengers cannot touch the wall) do not have any adverts.The same is true of the Washington Metro. They don't illuminate the platforms well enough to read, so ads are only mounted on lighted kiosks which are paid for by the advertising revenue. We also have those flickering animated ads on the tunnel walls--which if you ask me are a little annoying.

I suspect it's a national standard. (Not that we have that many subways in America. There are about a dozen "rapid transit" systems and not all of them have underground segments.) Washington experimented with letting advertisers paint the entire exterior of a subway car. That idea ran into trouble when one many of the anti-drug-prohibition organizations wanted to paint a cannabis leaf on one.

Captain Kremmen

01-20-09, 10:03 AM

Seems like a waste of advertising space.
Waiting for a train to arrive, you will read anything available.
On the Tube, the inside walls are covered with huge posters.
You wouldn't need to get close to read them.
I saw one a few weeks back of a TV chef, and his gigantic head was so covered in acne marks and blackheads, usually made invisible with actors make-up, that I actually felt a bit ill.

BenTheMan

01-20-09, 12:31 PM

There has to be some sort of way to figure out what the maximum amount of information vs. the minimum amount of characters one needs, with inputs for complications and length. So, for example, you can convey a lot of information in Chinese, because they have more degrees of freedom. However, the language is very complicated. Likewise with English. We have a very weird language because there are tons of exceptions. An example from the other end of the spectrum is Hawaiian. They have something like 13 letters in their alphabet, so the names of things are very long.

Does anyone know if such a calculation exists.

Fraggle Rocker

01-20-09, 09:18 PM

So, for example, you can convey a lot of information in Chinese, because they have more degrees of freedom. However, the language is very complicated.Chinese is not complicated. There are no inflections so the grammar is very straightforward. No person, no tense, no gender, no number, no case. There are no articles, no prepositions, in fact the only parts of speech are nouns and verbs, with just a couple of (optional) particles whose practical purpose is merely to make it easier to parse the sentence.

But your basic point is correct. Spoken Chinese is a more compact language than English. By my own not-very-scientific count, I'd say that it takes an average of seven syllables in Chinese to express what takes ten in English. And English itself is pretty compact.

As a result, Chinese can be (and often is) spoken more slowly then English, which makes it easier for students and non-native speakers to follow.

tim840

01-20-09, 11:33 PM

Fraggle Rocker

01-21-09, 12:00 PM

well another thing we use qs for, speaking of chinese, is romanization of languages that dont use our alphabet. but in pinyin, the letter q is pronounced uniquely, and cannot be replaced. if we got rid of qs, learning chinese would be much harder.The first transcription system I learned was the Yale. I think it's the best for English-speaking people who haven't actually studied Chinese and don't understand its phonetic structure, because none of the letter-to-phoneme mappings are counterintuitive. Chang/qiang, zhang/jiang and shang/xiang are chang/chyang, jang/jyang and shang/syang.