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.
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.
>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.
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!
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.
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.
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).
