# How/when did the "U follows Q" in English orthography get so locked in? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 20, 2017, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849 "2017-04-20T15:16:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/1 "2017-04-20T15:16:12Z")
See query. It seems all the more striking given the famous English lubricity of spelling (“ghoti–\>fish”). ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/2 "2017-04-20T15:20:13Z")
No idea, but the “ghoti” spells “fish” thing is a dumb joke more than anything else. I mean, I get the point: oh, that wacky English spelling! But English spelling is not flexible to that extent. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/3 "2017-04-20T15:23:17Z")
**Leo Bloom** post includes dumb joke. And this time it even bears more than the faintest relation/purpose to point of post–now _that’s_ the most surprising part. ETA: 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/4 "2017-04-20T15:27:53Z")
Best I could find so far is that it was introduced via French in Middle English after the Norman Conquest. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/5 "2017-04-20T15:56:19Z")
This Mental Floss article goes into some detail about it: > **[Why Does Q (Almost) Always Go With a U?](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/54772/why-does-q-almost-always-go-u)** > > Leaving aside for now the few foreign loanwords (e.g., Qatar, Iraq) where Q shows up without a U, an English Q is the only letter that can't go anywhere without a partner. Why does a Q always need a U? We can blame it on a whole bunch of our... Basically, before the Norman invasion of 1066, words like queen and quick were spelled cwen and cwic. The Normans changed the kw sounds to the French QU. When the French stopped pronouncing the U part of that and just turned it into a k sound they kept the QU spelling. English words borrowed from the French also kept the QU spelling. The article goes on to explain where the French got the QU spelling from initially. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/6 "2017-04-20T15:56:44Z")
According to this, it [all goes back to Latin.](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12326/why-is-q-followed-by-a-u) In Latin there were three ways to spell the hard “kkk” sound – the letters C, K or Q. On the other hand, the letter U had to do triple duty, representing U. V and W. But the English, there were no letters K, Q, V, or W. That left C and the letter Wynn, which was eventually written to look like W. If you go back to Beowulf, you’ll see that [Old English generally used the letters CW](http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html) to represent the “kwuh” sound. However, the French used (and still do) the letters QU. After the Norman Conquest in 1066, the French spellings gradually overwhelmed the Old English. By the time Chaucer started writing the Canterbury Tales (1387) in Middle English, [QU had replaced both C and K to represent the “kwuh” sound.](http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm) Why do almost all English words with a Q always follow it with a U? Probably because we also have C and K to represent “kkk.” ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/7 "2017-04-20T17:29:12Z")
It should be noted that the “qu” spelling that the French used comes from the Latin. Qv got used to represent [kw]. C\_ got used to represent all other [k] sound combinations. K was used primarily in words borrowed from Greek, which used _kappa_ to represent the sound. And to slightly modify what **kunilou** said, the Romans used “v”, not “u” originally. “V” is easier to inscribe into stone. In English, we’ve assigned the various different sounds that “v” represented in Latin to “u”, “v”, and “w”. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/8 "2017-04-20T17:38:02Z")
Just to confuse the issue, in old Scots, you will find “qu” instead of a “w” in (presumably) aspirated “wh” words like what, while, and so on: [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/80308/what-was-going-on-with-quha-quhat-and-the-like-in-scots-and-english](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/80308/what-was-going-on-with-quha-quhat-and-the-like-in-scots-and-english) ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/9 "2017-04-20T18:23:31Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#): > > Just to confuse the issue, in old Scots, you will find “qu” instead of a “w” in (presumably) aspirated “wh” words like what, while, and so on: That spelling still shows up in some names, for example Farquhar. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/10 "2017-04-20T22:45:01Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > That spelling still shows up in some names, for example Farquhar. Good thing he isn’t compensating for it. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2017, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/11 "2017-04-20T23:14:29Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > But the English, there were no letters K, Q, V, or W. That left C and the letter Wynn, which was eventually written to look like W. If you go back to Beowulf, you’ll see that [Old English generally used the letters CW](http://www.heorot.dk/beowulf-rede-text.html) to represent the “kwuh” sound. However, the French used (and still do) the letters QU. Just to be clear, though, while the French use the letters QU quite often, they do not represent the “kwuh” sound. Most often it’s just “k,” as in “quatre” which is KAH-TR. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/12 "2017-04-21T01:05:45Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > Good thing he isn’t compensating for it. 😛 That would be quheer, wouldn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/13 "2017-04-21T01:27:00Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > [The ‘qu’] spelling still shows up in some names, for example Farquhar. Uh? The only person I ever worked with who had that name pronounced it “farker”. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/14 "2017-04-21T01:55:03Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > Just to be clear, though, while the French use the letters QU quite often, they do not represent the “kwuh” sound. Most often it’s just “k,” as in “quatre” which is KAH-TR. This was addressed up-thread, where it was pointed out that the French used to pronounce it “kw”, but later refined that. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/15 "2017-04-21T01:59:30Z")
And of course there’s the silent “qu” in the Scottish name Colquhoun (pronounced “Cahoon”). ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/16 "2017-04-21T03:37:44Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > Uh? The only person I ever worked with who had that name pronounced it “farker”. You had “the qu spelling”. I meant the “quh” spelling. That’s much rarer. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2017, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-when-did-the-u-follows-q-in-english-orthography-get-so-locked-in/784849/17 "2017-04-21T09:00:13Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > That spelling still shows up in some names, for example Farquhar. > [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > And of course there’s the silent “qu” in the Scottish name Colquhoun (pronounced “Cahoon”). My favourite in that line is the village of Kilconquhar in the Scottish county of Fife – pronounced, I gather, “Kin-NEW-kher”.