Why do we need the letter K?

[woodstockbirdybird]

Actually, I was going to ask why we need the letter "C" when "S" and "K" do the same jobs, but I guess "K" was the more recent addition to the alphabet. Even so, it seems we could do without one or the other - or else make "C" stand for the "ch" sound or something. I mean, if it was spelled it "stic" or "stik" instead of "stick", would there really be that much confusion as to how it should be pronounced? Obviously, my example leaves out numerous subtleties, but still, it seems to me "K" is basically redundant. There must be some relatively logical reason for its inclusion in the alphabet. Any ideas?

[Strinka]

X and Q are also redundant.

As far as I know, there's no reason for such redundancies.

It's just the way it is.

[woodstockbirdybird]

X and Q are also redundant.

As far as I know, there's no reason for such redundancies.

It's just the way it is.

X I can understand because at least it simplifies things - instead of "cks" or merely "cs" or "ks", you've got one letter to do the same job. Q's a bit more problematic, but it feels more correct and nuanced than using a "cu" or "ku" (or "kw", etc.), though that's probably just because I've been conditioned to think so. The C/K thing seems less necessary, somehow.

[groman]

There must be some relatively logical reason for its inclusion in the alphabet. Any ideas?

Never underestimate the power of the KKK members of the alphabet cabal, and everybody hates getting new business cards.

Why do you think there's a logical reason for any letter being in the alphabet? :dubious:

[woodstockbirdybird]

Why do you think there's a logical reason for any letter being in the alphabet? :dubious:

Because if there isn't...it'll be anarchy! Cats and dogs, living together!...

[Rico]

It's because of that stupid song.

[groman]

Because if there isn't...it'll be anarchy! Cats and dogs, living together!...

The English alphabet is a set of loosely affiliated glyphs that tend to congregate in the same messages. If you don't like the letter "K", don't use it. Maybe you can even keep using dictionary words from a real dictionary and still be O...CAY? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_%28novel%29) If you propose to eliminate it I would say you'd have to somehow force a good majority of english speakers to not use it. I'm not giving up "K" without a fight.

[Maastricht]

Hey, you self centered English speakers! We in the Netherlands DO use the K daily, thank youverymuch! What do you want, your own alphabet?

[fishbicycle]

Couldn't spell my name without it!

[sturmhauke]

Seriously though, English spelling is so fucked up because it steals words from all over the place, along with their original spellings, which until relatively recently weren't set in stone anyway. Over time the pronunciation mutates, and then the spelling mutates, and then you get the mess we have today.

[Argent Towers]

"Fuc" just doesn't have the same ring.

[groman]

Hey, you self centered English speakers! We in the Netherlands DO use the K daily, thank youverymuch! What do you want, your own alphabet?


Sit down or I'll tell woodstockbirdybird about lange ij and he'll be on your ass too! ;)

[RaftPeople]

Mark Twain had some ideas regarding this topic:

http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html

[bbs2k]

Mark Twain had some ideas regarding this topic:

http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.htmlThank you. Before now I had no idea that Mark and Shania Twain were unrelated.

[psycat90]

kite

cite


And think of the poor club kids, or klub cids, or something.

[pkbites]

This is not not the first time I've heard people say there were too many letters in our language. What is the origin of this weird complaint? Flashbacks of how hard it was for you to learn the alphabet as a kid? :D

[chowder]

Couldn't spell my name without it!
Me neither

And we don't steal words, we borrow them, permanently

[I'm Ron Burgundy?]

X and Q are also redundant.

As far as I know, there's no reason for such redundancies.

It's just the way it is.
English borrows much of its vocabulary from other languages. Many times the spelling is kept intact. This half applies to words like facade, which requires a çedille in its native tongue. Anyway, the only reason is that orthography doesn't necessarily match pronunciation. Many say we don't need such and such letter, but without the bizarre practice, we'd have another host of homographs to confuse us, imported from homophones like site, sight & cite.

French doesn't 'need' a K either. If you look in the K section of a French dictionary, it's the shortest, like our Q or X section, because most French words with a K in them are foreign in origin. The French spell our 'k' sound with a 'qu.'

[Bill Door]

English borrows much of its vocabulary from other languages. Many times the spelling is kept intact. This half applies to words like facade, which requires a çedille in its native tongue. Anyway, the only reason is that orthography doesn't necessarily match pronunciation. Many say we don't need such and such letter, but without the bizarre practice, we'd have another host of homographs to confuse us, imported from homophones like site, sight & cite.

French doesn't 'need' a K either. If you look in the K section of a French dictionary, it's the shortest, like our Q or X section, because most French words with a K in them are foreign in origin. The French spell our 'k' sound with a 'qu.'


I think one of the dopers had a paraphrase of this as a sig.
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

[WF Tomba]

We've only got ~42 phonemes in English, so it seems to me we could get rid of most of our letters if we used them more efficiently. For example, we could assign each sound a number and thereby write with just 10 symbols.

[Hari Seldon]

One misconception: K is not more recent that C. Just the opposite, C was a late addition to the Latin alphabet. What happened was that the letter occupying that spot was a G sound. Gradually, many instances got devoiced and, rather than spelling them with a K, they divided the G into two letters and put one in the place that had been occupied by the Z, which Latin didn't need but whose omission screwed up the counting system (bad move, after borrowing zillions of Greek words, they had to take it back). Then many instances of the this K sound softened to an S sound, so we wind up with a letter with two sounds, each of which was covered by another letter. Incidentally, the K is softened in some contexts in Norwegian and probably the other Scandinavian languages too.

The problem with spelling reform is that it leaves the old texts unreadable and with not reforming is you wind up with the horrors of English spelling. English has several dozen (maybe more, but my son and I came up with several dozen examples without breathing hard) examples of pairs of words spelled the same and pronunced differently: read, lead, abuse, house, .... Often, but not always, they are verb/noun pairs.

[RealityChuck]

I think we should go with the decibet (http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75rdecabet.phtml). It would solve all these problems.

[WF Tomba]

The problem with spelling reform is that it leaves the old texts unreadable and with not reforming is you wind up with the horrors of English spelling.
Luckily, widespread literacy is slowly extricating us from this dilemma, as "spelling pronunciations" gradually take over. In effect, the speakers of English are carrying out a collective "pronunciation reform" that (I think) will eventually make this language much easier to spell.

[Napier]

>Hey, you self centered English speakers! We in the Netherlands DO use the K daily, thank youverymuch! What do you want, your own alphabet?

WHY do you in the Netherlands use K? I mean, why do you even speak Foreign? It's obvious from your post you can write normally. Sort of. Though, we do put spaces between words when using proper English letters.

[Beware of Doug]

For example, we could assign each sound a number and thereby write with just 10 symbols.1F UR L337 U 4LR34DY D0 7|-|47 D00D!!!111! |-|4 |-|4 1 P\/\/N2 J00

...0 \/\/417 7|-|472 N07 \/\/|-|47 U /\/\34N O NO32 1 R P\/\/N3D!!1

[Northern Piper]

What would Sesame Street do without "K"? think of all the sponsorships that "K" is involved in. Do you think "C" or "Q" will take up the slack?? As if! Once "K" is gone, that's one less competitor, and they can cut down on their promotion budgets - tight bastards!

And I wouldn't be surprised if "Q" goes next - it's already got a pretty small market share. Then we'll be left to the tender mercies of of "C" and its monopoly on "kuh" sounds.

You think we'll get good phoneme service in that sort of situation? That's why the feds broke up Bell, remember?

Keep "K", and keep market choice! Let the konsumers decide!

[Kozmik]

Y!

[Alive At Both Ends]

Without "K", how would I pronounce "bolour supplement"?

[panache45]

Without "K", how would I pronounce "bolour supplement"?bunt.

[August West]

Won't someone think of Potassium!?

[OtakuLoki]

We need K to allow us to differentiate between Potassium and Carbon.


ETA: Two minutes. Two lousy, stinking minutes.



(Okay, how would you spell "stinking" without K?)

[guizot]

I suppose it has a few useful purposes, as in distinguishing between block (usually some kind of physical object) and bloc (an allied group), but context would make that more often than not unnecessary.

It might also been seen as helpful in clarifying for new readers the pronunciation of panicked, panicking, etc., though granted, one might just as easily write paniqued, etc.

While seemingly unnecessary letters in English have origins which can be explained, we continue to use them more out of tradition.

[SpectBrain]

We need K to allow us to differentiate between Potassium and Carbon.


ETA: Two minutes. Two lousy, stinking minutes.



(Okay, how would you spell "stinking" without K?)


stinquing?

odiferous?

[Spoke]

Why do we need the letter K?

I don't now the answer.

[woodstockbirdybird]

Just to clarify: I'm not saying I think we should eliminate the letter K (or C) - it would be pointless now that it's so ingrained - just that I was baffled by how it came into use in the first place, as it seems unnecessary. As for "Kite/cite" and other examples: without a "k", I'm sure we'd have managed somehow; "cyte", perhaps, and similarly for other words ("noe" for "know", etc.). Sure they look weird now, but if it had been that way all along, we'd see no problem with it.

Thanks for the historical information, too.

[Sunspace]

Leave K alone. The one we can get rid of is C. Its two sounds can be spelt with K and S. :)

And let's return to CW (er, I mean, KW now) instead of QU. We kan get rid of Q entirely, unless we're planning to introduse a voiced guttural K-type sound... (linguists will know what I'm trying to say here).

[RealityChuck]

Hell, let's bring back the velar fricative!

[sturmhauke]

1F UR L337 U 4LR34DY D0 7|-|47 D00D!!!111! |-|4 |-|4 1 P\/\/N2 J00

...0 \/\/417 7|-|472 N07 \/\/|-|47 U /\/\34N O NO32 1 R P\/\/N3D!!1
|_||2 133+5|^3@|< !2 \\|34]<5/\[_]([-

[Alive At Both Ends]

Leave K alone. The one we can get rid of is C. Its two sounds can be spelt with K and S. :)
Which would you use to replace the C's in church, chop, chess, choo-choo etc?

[An Arky]

Gotta keep k, because it's the end of My D!ck. Otherwise it would be C: The End of My D!ck. :D


I kill myself.

[Kozmik]

I kill myself.Otherwise, you couldn't

[Sunspace]

Which would you use to replace the C's in church, chop, chess, choo-choo etc?Point taken. We kan use C for this and get rid of the CH combination. Curc. Cop. Cess. Coo-coo. :)

And while we're at it, we split the TH kombination, restoring separate letters for its two voised and unvoised sounds, and bring back the Thorn and Eth letters from Old English.

[guizot]

Just to clarify: I'm not saying I think we should eliminate the letter K (or C) - it would be pointless now that it's so ingrained - just that I was baffled by how it came into use in the first place, as it seems unnecessary. As for "Kite/cite" and other examples: without a "k", I'm sure we'd have managed somehow; "cyte", perhaps, and similarly for other words ("noe" for "know", etc.). Sure they look weird now, but if it had been that way all along, we'd see no problem with it.

Thanks for the historical information, too.It's not as though you're the first to consider this issue. Ben Franklin prodded Webster to do the same thing. They succeeded in some ways (color vs. colour), but in the end people apparently didn't want to avoid confusion in some areas when reading. (Reading wasn't exactly the equivalent of TV today.)

Also, while, as noted by We've only got ~42 phonemes in English, so it seems to me we could get rid of most of our letters if we used them more efficiently. For example, we could assign each sound a number and thereby write with just 10 symbols.Whoosh not withstanding, to think in terms of phonemes (and ignore phonology, when we put all these sounds together in an utterance), seems to me to ignore the nuance that any human language naturally has. English has chosen the use of various letters to do so in writing, apparently (Shakespeare certainly did so).

Human language isn't about "efficiency"--that is to say, saying the most information with the least writing or utterance. (Maybe WF Tomba isn't human--then, my apologies.)

[WF Tomba]

Whoosh not withstanding, to think in terms of phonemes (and ignore phonology, when we put all these sounds together in an utterance), seems to me to ignore the nuance that any human language naturally has. English has chosen the use of various letters to do so in writing, apparently (Shakespeare certainly did so).

Human language isn't about "efficiency"--that is to say, saying the most information with the least writing or utterance. (Maybe WF Tomba isn't human--then, my apologies.)
I agree with you. I don't really think we should write with numbers. My (veiled) point was the same as yours, that our writing system was developed without much concern for efficiency of expression. To me, minor spelling reforms are sort of like making little alterations to a 737 to improve its highway mileage.

Edit: That's not such a good analogy, since the 737 was carefully engineered for a specific purpose while the alphabet was not. Substitute "butternut squash" for "737" and "effectiveness as a bowling ball" for "highway mileage".

[Northern Piper]

And what about poor Apu?

"Who needs a _wik-E-Mart?

I do..."

[cmyk]

How else would one differentiate between Blue and Black in an RGB / CMYK situation? I should know.

Maybe the question is not to get rid of the letter "K" (which I happen to be fond of), but maybe introduce the letter "‡". Sounds kind of like "H", but not.

Also, What's with "Y" sometimes gallivanting around like a vowel? All vowels have their own unique long and short sound. I see "Y" more as a consonant cross-dresser. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But we all kinda feel uncomfortable around rhythm, nonetheless.

And Q is just too far up in the alphabet in my opinion. What's he doing up there between "P" and "R"? Trying to get laid, that's what. Put him next to "U" where he belongs. Cheating Bastard. Does "Q" just think she's oblivious?! They were meant for each other, so "Q" needs to stick with his commitments. ...L, M, N, O, P... R, S, T... Q, U, V... W, X... Y and Z. See? Isn't that nice?

Also, I've contracted the first word made entirely of silent letters:



What's its definition? A word comprised entirely of silent letters. It's pronounced how you'd think.

[Sleel]

If you wanted to do away with all spelling ambiguity, there's already a good solution in place that linguists use all the time: the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet)). The problem is of course that regional dialects would cause spelling changes in many words. Depending on how big of a difference there was between your brand of English and the other person's, you could have some difficulty communicating in writing.

Legacy writing would be a problem too, but not that huge considering that not many of us have read things in their original orthography. For example, spelling was . . . creative in Shakespeare's time, and like most people he didn't consistently spell the same word the same way. I can virtually guarantee that no one outside of a college lit major has read Shakespeare without spelling standardization, vocabulary substitution, and/or footnotes to explain things that can't just be glossed over. Even more recent Colonial-era documents like The Declaration of Independence have been transliterated. In fact, it's not until the middle of the 19th century that you see the same consistent and standardized spelling that we (mostly) use now. The s–z and ou–u differences between British and American spelling come partly from that late standardization.

The alphabet would be bigger, but spelling would be a breeze since there would be a one-to-one correspondence between the sound and the symbol. Written Italian has close to that correspondence so teaching spelling is hardly even necessary; there's no such thing as a spelling bee in Italy. Spelling reform in English will probably never happen though.

[Indistinguishable]

Like you said, differing accents would be a bit of a problem for the use of phonetic alphabets for everyday writing. For example, should Americans have an alveolar flap letter in their alphabet which the Brits lack, or should Americans just suck it up and memorize which particular flapped sounds are to be written as 't's and which as 'd's? Similarly, should some people spell "Mary", "marry", and "merry" the same while others spell them differently (and so on for "cot" and "caught", etc.)? Or should we standardize, and in the process reintroduce spelling difficulties for one camp or another each time?

Not that any of these issues are insurmountable, mind you, and, admittedly, though things would be short of the ostensible perfect towards which they strive, spelling (which is to say, reading and writing) would be a whole lot easier in many ways, quite a laudable goal. Still, when people get misty-eyed about 1-1 correspondence between writing systems and pronunciation (I don't mean you here; just spelling reform advocates in general), I can't help but think they've been misguided as to the value of such a thing.

[guizot]

If you wanted to do away with all spelling ambiguity, there's already a good solution in place that linguists use all the time: the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet)). The problem is of course that regional dialects would cause spelling changes in many words. Depending on how big of a difference there was between your brand of English and the other person's, you could have some difficulty communicating in writing.Yes, I like the IPA well enough for explaining differences in pronunciation, but writing--an artificial construct of humans--serves a different purpose--that is, simply to communicate ideas beyond regional differences in pronunciation. I don't see much point in using the IPA to write to someone in England or India. They don't really care about the American /t/ flap, for example, as I would say it. They just want to know whether I'm talking about a "writer" rather than a "rider"--and whether it be legal rider or of a vehicle rider. Using the IPA wouldn't clarify that; only context does.

Languages--especially in written form--tend to fix themselves naturally when ambiguity such as this arises. The /k/ vs. the "qu" vs. the "ch" (as in "character"), are a small burden to pay when learning to write, and vary rarely does TRUE (I say "true" because there are some obvious jokes--amusing though they be--where everyone can figure out the true meaning of the writer) confusion arise because of orthography.

You've got 26 letters in English. Is that too many for you? Why don't you try learning Chinese pictographs or Japanese kanji. Then you might be content with the occasional "k" in English.

[Doctor Who]

Interestingly, for purposes of simplicity, tap code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_Code) omits the letter K in favor of C.

[Roadfood]

English has several dozen (maybe more, but my son and I came up with several dozen examples without breathing hard) examples of pairs of words spelled the same and pronunced differently: read, lead, abuse, house, .... Often, but not always, they are verb/noun pairs.through, rough, bough, cough, dough, bought.

[Sunspace]

You've got 26 letters in English. Is that too many for you? Why don't you try learning Chinese pictographs or Japanese kanji. Then you might be content with the occasional "k" in English.I don't see why we couldn't have, say, thirty-six letters in English. Aren't most of the dialect differences in the vowels? We could split the consonants out so that thet all have their own sounds, and let the vowels vary. Though the glottal stop and alveolar flap (thanks, Indistinguishable!) situations may be a problem.

[guizot]

I don't see why we couldn't have, say, thirty-six letters in English. Aren't most of the dialect differences in the vowels? We could split the consonants out so that they all have their own sounds, and let the vowels vary. Though the glottal stop and alveolar flap (thanks, Indistinguishable!) situations may be a problem.That sounds good to me. Go ahead ahead and try it. Your work is cut out for you. You have at least the whole of North America and the British "Empire" to deal with....and let the vowels vary....We already have over 20 vowels (depending on whether you consider r-coloring and l-coloring as distinct vowels.) Your number of 36 would expand to over 50, I'd imagine.


It might make literacy more attainable, but I doubt it. I think we're stuck with what we have.

Imagine: you want your child to read Cinderella. Using 36 sylmbols (rather than 26), is he or she going to get much more out of it?

[Indistinguishable]

The main reason it won't make literacy more attainable, of course, is because nothing is written that way. Unfortunate, perhaps, but what are you gonna do? If you want to change such an immensely popular writing system, you have to do it gradually.

[Gukumatz]

Mark Twain had some ideas regarding this topic:

http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html

Damnit.

*Strikes the letter "K" off the list of Things Which Mark Twain Hasn't Written About"*

I'm down to a single sheet of paper now.

[Derleth]

Why don't you try learning Chinese pictographsChinese doesn't have pictographs. I don't think any modern written language uses pictographs.

[blondebear]

No K? Somehow "O-ay" just doesn't sound right.

[Mosier]

Isn't it useful in helping to determine the origin of a word? I'd say keep it, because it's part of our cultural identity.

edit: Also, isn't it useful in places were a C would have had a soft sound, like "fake"?

[suranyi]

If anyone is seriously interested in the history of our alphabet, and why we have the particular letters we do, and how they came to be in the order they are, I can recommend this book: Language Visible by David Sacks.

Among many other things, it talks about something that has been already mentioned in this thread: The ancester of our letter "C" was originally a "G" sound, so the ancester of our "K" was not a redundant letter.

Ed

[guizot]

Chinese doesn't have pictographs. I don't think any modern written language uses pictographs.Well, then, please insert the appropriate term while I wash my socks. Thank you.

[Derleth]

Well, then, please insert the appropriate term while I wash my socks. Thank you.How would we spell 'snark' without the letter 'k'? 'Snarque' just doesn't quite do it.