What Is The Point Of The Letter Q

What is the point of the letter Q? Why can’t we spell “question” like “kwestion”? Where does Q come from?

I’ve had a lovely English teacher back in my junior year in uni. When I ask such questions she would reply back like “Do not enquire the language itself”. This simple sentence made me realize to not give much of damn about the language itself because languages are not constructed purposely. They are created inherently with their cultural and historical progresses. So speaking your question, as a matter of fact I might also enquire like “hey wait, why do not we pronounce ‘tion’ as ‘cio’ as in French and likewise write like that?”. You see, what we hear from a foreign language as people from different languages and cultures are not as same as for those natives who hear them. It is all about perceptions, you might hear a dog barking as “bark, korb” whatever but we in Turkish hear as “hav”. Again, it’s all about perceptions man. Go and get some English readings instead of enquiring every single alphabet of English in terms of appropriateness of phonetics that might take the shit out of your life. Accept the language’s uniqueness and welcome that by your heart. It’ll make it a lot easier.

Why does the letter Q exist?

Regarding the English language, Mental Floss has this to say: Before the Norman invasion of 1066, English didn't even have a Q. Words like queen and quick were spelled cwen and cwic. Not only did the Normans inject a whole bunch of French vocabulary into English, they changed the spelling of English words according to their French ways. French represented the 'kw' sound with QU spelling. To make things more complicated, French people stopped pronouncing the w part, but their spelling never caught up with that change, so words that English borrowed much later, like mystique and quiche, have a 'k' pronunciation instead of 'kw.' - See more at: http://m.mentalfloss.com/article...