# Why do we have the letter C? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2011, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506 "2011-12-17T06:08:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/21 "2011-12-17T21:48:59Z")
> [@cookie\_eater](#): > > but what would go wrong if we took them out anyway? It would be unfamiliar, of course, but if it was that way from the beginning, it wouldn’t really matter. Yes there would be a problem with words like that sound a like but are spelled differently, like “weigh” and “way,” but we use them in so many different words that don’t even require them, like “home” or even “sleigh.” There’s no reason for an “e” or an extra “l,” is there? Thér yoosful beecaws thér diffrunt spelingz let yoo no wich wurd it iz thér. ---
**Author:** ![cookie\_eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@cookie\_eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cookie_eater)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/22 "2011-12-17T23:06:47Z")
and what about “the”? Didn’t it used to be pronounced “thee”? Who had the bright idea of changing “thee” to the pronunciation of “thu”? I mean I’d understand an “eh” sound maybe, even though it would sound kind of strange, but what does the “uh” sound have anything to do with the letter e? ---
**Author:** ![cookie\_eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@cookie\_eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cookie_eater)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/23 "2011-12-17T23:10:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Thér yoosful beecaws thér diffrunt spelingz let yoo no wich wurd it iz thér. > Reply With Quote .. um I don’t get it. Like I said earlier, there are words that don’t need those extra silent letters. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/24 "2011-12-17T23:12:51Z")
> [@cookie\_eater](#): > > and what about “the”? Didn’t it used to be pronounced “thee”? Who had the bright idea of changing “thee” to the pronunciation of “thu”? I mean I’d understand an “eh” sound maybe, even though it would sound kind of strange, but what does the “uh” sound have anything to do with the letter e? It helps if you stop thinking about the letters first, sounds second. It is the other way around: the letters represent sounds. Each sound is produced by doing a few different things with lips, tongue, throat, etc. If you concentrate on what you’re doing when you say “thee” and “thuh,” you’ll see that the two aren’t nearly as far apart as the letters E and U would make you think. ETA: For silent letters, they can help distinguish meaning (way vs. weigh), show you the history of the language (-gh used to be pronounced), and help make it so that speakers of different dialects understand each other. For me, “cot” and “caught” sound the same, so I’d spell them “kot” and “kot.” But people in England, they have completely different vowels, so if I just wrote “stok” they would assume I meant “stock,” not “stalk.” ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/25 "2011-12-17T23:15:58Z")
> [@cookie\_eater](#): > > and what about “the”? Didn’t it used to be pronounced “thee”? Who had the bright idea of changing “thee” to the pronunciation of “thu”? I mean I’d understand an “eh” sound maybe, even though it would sound kind of strange, but what does the “uh” sound have anything to do with the letter e? That’s something that happens in modern English (especially American English). Vowels in unstressed syllables trend toward the [schwa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa). “The” is almost always unstressed. When it IS stressed (as in the question, “Are you THE cookie\_eater and not some unfamous, common cookie\_eater?”), you might find that the word is actually pronounced with a long “e”. Also, in front of vowels…“the anteater”, “the elephant”. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/26 "2011-12-17T23:29:35Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > Bolding mine. What languages exactly is this not true for? Are languages with a saner spelling system less amazing, evolving, and fantastic? Kinda, yes. They’re less likely to have origins as mixed as English and/or don’t have a written form as old as ours. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/27 "2011-12-17T23:30:58Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > Those that you single out for being “silent” serve a purpose for reading (i.e., decoding written language). Their purpose isn’t to “make sounds.” It’s to help you recognize the written (silent) symbols as distinct lexical items. They aren’t useless at all. > [@Polycarp](#): > > [silent letters are] yoosful beecaws thér diffrunt spelingz let yoo no wich wurd it iz thér. If indeed that is the case. I don’t see how the U that follows most Qs is helping to disambiguate. In any case, many english words have multiple meanings and we tell them apart from context. Following your logic through, we should instead have dozens of different spellings of “set”, each utilizing silent letters (and even then there’d be vocal ambiguity). ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/28 "2011-12-17T23:38:46Z")
> [@cookie\_eater](#): > > …we use them in so many different words that don’t even require them, like “home” or even “sleigh.” There’s no reason for an “e” or an extra “l,” is there?..you kind of do pronounce that extra “l.” Actually, no, but that’s not the point. Most of the time we don’t look at print in order to pronounce words. (Even in those very rare situations where someone is reading something and speaking at the same time, two different parts of the brain are used to accomplish this. The letters don’t tell us how to pronounce words that we already know.) Rather, we read printed language in order to understand information, and we do it silently. If _way_ and _weigh_ were spelled the same, yes, we’d be able to figure out the meaning though context. We could conceivably spell the two words in the same way, and manage. English has many homonyms already. But the different spelling provides added information to facilitate comprehension in distinguishing the different meanings. Ultimately, once a word is part of your vocabulary, you don’t decode it through sound when you’re reading in order to comprehend it. So the more contextual information we have, the easier it is to understand what we read. That’s why we use paragraph formatting, capital letters, etc.–none of which have anything to do with how words sound in speech. Reading isn’t about vocalization, (except for pedagogical purposes in the early stages of reading instruction). How do you think people read Chinese (which is basically pictures)? Or for that matter, what about traffic signs? It’s not necessary for a stop sign to be a hexagon shape–you’d still understand what the sign means if it were a circle, right? But the shape–and the fact that stop signs are the only ones in that shape–facilitates comprehension. The shape of the sign doesn’t have anything to do with how people pronounce the word _stop_, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, because the purpose of the sign isn’t to tell you how to speak the word “stop.” You already know that, and you knew that even before you started read. The purpose of the sign is for you to put your foot on the break. \*\*\*So are you going to complain because the hexagon shape of a stop sign is “silent,” and therefore “unnecessary” because it doesn’t help to tell you how to pronounce the word _stop_? \*\*\*The function of a stop sign is not relevant to how the word is spoken. The purpose of the sign, and the process by which you comprehend the sign, have little or nothing to do with speaking. Once you’ve learned how to read, such details of spelling don’t really matter that much, as long as everyone agrees to spell words the same way. Likewise, when you drive from one city to another unfamiliar city, you can always recognize a stop sign by its shape from a longer distance than your eyes can recognize the typeface of the word “stop” if the sign were just some arbitrary shape. Also, keep in mind that if you really wanted to have the English writing system correspond to speech, then we’d actually have to _ **add** _ symbols (new letters). English uses the same letters for different vowels–for example, the second letter "o"in _photograph_ and _photography_ does not represent the same vowel. And we’d have to devise different ways to write the consonant in _ether_ and _either_, instead of using _th_ for both sounds. Yes, in theory “we” could decide to spell _spell_ with one “l,” but it’s not like the pronunciation is relevant to that decision. English speakers already know how to pronounce “spell” before they read or write. Really, it would be a lot of effort getting everyone to recognize and enact the change for no real benefit. Changing it to one “l” isn’t going to help in comprehension. And you might think the second letter “l” in _rebelling_ is “unnecessary,” but for automated speech generation (GPS or Siri) it provides cues for syllable stress. (_reBEL_ rather than _REbel_.) Additionally, another advantage of heterographs (homophones that are spelled differently, such as _way_ and _weigh_) is for automated translation (Google, etc.) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/29 "2011-12-17T23:38:53Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Thér yoosful beecaws thér diffrunt spelingz let yoo no wich wurd it iz thér. Ai saw wut yoo did thér. ---
**Author:** ![cookie\_eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@cookie\_eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cookie_eater)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/30 "2011-12-17T23:40:40Z")
Ah, the joy of the english language, and all it’s combinations of other languages. I think I get it now, especially how the silent letters affect pronuncation. That makes sense. I was kind of wondering how the pronunciation changed from “thee” to the “thu” in the first place? Was it just something conversational that lead to a word change?( That does happen now a days too… I can’t really think of a top-of-my-head example.) Did it start from a different dialect? Ack. I just realized I can edit my post, sorry for all the different posts above where I messed up. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2011, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/31 "2011-12-17T23:59:06Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > If indeed that is the case. I don’t see how the U that follows most Qs is helping to disambiguate. > > In any case, many english words have multiple meanings and we tell them apart from context. > Following your logic through, we should instead have dozens of different spellings of “set”, each utilizing silent letters (and even then there’d be vocal ambiguity). The question isn’t disambiguation or logic, so much that reading is not ultimately a cognitive process that’s bound to vocalization, so that the degree to which English orthography is truly phonetic is not really important enough to try to change spelling at this point. Beyond alleviating the attention we have to pay towards correct spelling, it would neither be practical nor all that beneficial. If the letters are superfluous, it’s not because they’re “silent.” ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/32 "2011-12-18T00:00:57Z")
> [@guizot](#): > > \*\*\*So are you going to complain because the hexagon shape of a stop sign is “silent,” and therefore “unnecessary” because it doesn’t help to tell you how to pronounce the word _stop_? \*\*\* The shape of the sign however provides information (which may be redundant at times…but from a distance or a quick glance it is the primary source of information). Superfluous letters do not. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/33 "2011-12-18T00:20:05Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > The shape of the sign however provides information (which may be redundant at times…but from a distance or a quick glance it is the primary source of information). > Superfluous letters do not. They don’t? The difference in spelling between “walk” and “wok” doesn’t provide any information to be able to distinguish without context which means “locomotion with moderate effort of the legs” and “pan for stir-frying”? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/34 "2011-12-18T00:31:19Z")
Let me just clarify my position because some of these responses are ridiculous. It would have been preferable IMO if English had been more phonetically spelled. The minor advantage of the few instances where silent letters disambiguate is massively outweighed by the extra difficulty it adds to literacy. ETA: Sorry for tangent, **cookie\_eater** ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/35 "2011-12-18T00:39:20Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > It would have been preferable IMO if English had been more phonetically spelled. > > The minor advantage of the few instances where silent letters disambiguate is massively outweighed by the extra difficulty it adds to literacy. I don’t know about that. I learned English at 17. By “immersion”, mostly from working / socializing using computers (this was a precursor to Internet) and TV. I don’t remember ever having problems with spelling while learning the language. In fact, it was kinda fun, adding a bit of color to the language. Don’t think it ever added any difficulty to my literacy. English is one of the easiest (IMO) languages to learn. I passed TOEFL / got into college four months after coming to the US, and proficiencied out of all English requirements a year and a half later. If you took away the fun idiosyncratic and quirky spelling, the language would be much blander. ---
**Author:** ![Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fake_Tales_of_San_Francisco)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/36 "2011-12-18T00:42:05Z")
ɪf evrɪbɒdɪ wɒz flʊənt ɪn aɪ piː eɪ laɪf wʊd biː ə lɒt sɪmplə ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/37 "2011-12-18T00:52:38Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Following your logic through, we should instead have dozens of different spellings of “set”, each utilizing silent letters (and even then there’d be vocal ambiguity). The logic doesn’t work that way, though. Polycarp satirized how the homophones _their_, _they’re_, and \*there \*are ambiguated by phonetic spelling, implying how they’re disambiguated by traditional spelling. All three homophones came from originally different words. The -_r_ in _their_ derives from the Norse possessive, but the -_re_ in they’re is a contraction of _are_, which derives from an Anglo-Saxon verb for ‘to be’. In either case, the pronoun _they_ also comes from Norse. And the word \*there \*derives from an Anglo-Saxon pronoun. These are three completely different words whose pronunciations accidentally converged. The word _set_ has many meanings, but they all are in a sense the same word, derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root as the word _sit_. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/38 "2011-12-18T00:53:28Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > It would have been preferable IMO if English had been more phonetically spelled. English _ **was** _ more phonetically spelled when it was first written down. Then the spoken language changed. You could re-spell the whole thing phonetically based on today’s pronunciation, but you’d still have the same problem in 1000 years. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/39 "2011-12-18T01:17:21Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > I don’t know about that. I learned English at 17. By “immersion”, mostly from working / socializing using computers (this was a precursor to Internet) and TV. I don’t remember ever having problems with spelling while learning the language. In fact, it was kinda fun, adding a bit of color to the language. Don’t think it ever added any difficulty to my literacy. I think it’s been pretty well established that phonetically-written languages are simpler to learn to read and write. There has been a number of attempts to quantify the difference, but that _there is_ a difference I haven’t seen disputed. > [@Johanna](#): > > Polycarp satirized how the homophones their, they’re, and there are ambiguated by phonetic spelling, implying how they’re disambiguated by traditional spelling. All three homophones came from originally different words. The -r in their derives from the Norse possessive, but the -re in they’re is a contraction of are, which derives from an Anglo-Saxon verb for ‘to be’. In either case, the pronoun they also comes from Norse. And the word there derives from an Anglo-Saxon pronoun. These are three completely different words whose pronunciations accidentally converged. > > The word set has many meanings, but they all are in a sense the same word, derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root as the word sit. Etymology is interesting but practically I couldn’t care less whether two meanings were originally derived from the same root or whether it’s two separate words that happen to be spoken the same. They’re / their / there is an interesting example to use. Confusing them is one of the most common written mistakes. OTOH I can’t recall a situation where someone has heard the phonetic “ðɛər” and misinterpreted it. It’s usually obvious from context. So what’s the advantage again in the different spellings? ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506/40 "2011-12-18T02:37:16Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > They’re / their / there is an interesting example to use. Confusing them is one of the most common written mistakes. OTOH I can’t recall a situation where someone has heard the phonetic “ðɛər” and misinterpreted it. It’s usually obvious from context. > So what’s the advantage again in the different spellings? Because they are _different words_ (heck, one of 'em is a contraction of two words!) that happen to be pronounced the same, by most people, at this particular period in history. There is very little reason why they \*should \*be spelled the same. It’s almost the same as if you were to ask “so what’s the advantage again in the different spellings of ‘throatwarbler’ and ‘mangrove’?” Again, the answer is: _they’re different words_! Sure, a few words happen to have converged on the same accepted standard spelling – even at least one antonym pair (“cleave”). But notice that such pairs (even a few triplets) are given different entries in any dictionary. Why? Because they are different words! (And what’s an easy way to check if they’re different words? By their etymologies! More than just “interesting”, that.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-letter-c/606506.md?page=3)