M.J. Maddox,PhD

M.J. Maddox,PhD

c, q, x

Here are the “oddball” letters c, q, and x

Shakespeare called z an “unnecessary” letter, but letter c is probably more unnecessary.

C/c can stand for the sound /k/ as in cat and for the sound /s/ as in cent, but it has no sound of its own.

Q/q is another letter that has no sound of its own. In words of foreign origin, q usually occurs at the end of the word and represents the sound /k/, as in Iraq.

To be pronounced in an English word, q has to be followed by u. Qu represents the sound/kw/ as in queen and quick.

Xx
The letter x has no sound of its own.

At the end of a word, x represents the sounds /k/ and /s/ run together:/ks/ as in six.

At the beginning of a word, x represents the sound /z/ as in xylophone. In the constructed word X-ray, x says its name.

 

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9 Responses

  1. Akshat,
    This is positively the last time I will post one of your messages regarding the /k/ sound represented by the letter c in English.

    You do not give any examples of English words that illustrate your point that the sound “C usually makes is actually different from the sound that K makes.” What would those words be?

  2. 19 minutes ago
    I just want to point out somethings, so C from my understanding is actually a bit different from the sound that K makes. They sound the same but are actually different. The difference is the C is a Voiceless Palatal Plosive while K is a Voiceless Velar Plosive, so C does have its own sound. Sometimes C does copy S but the sound that C usually makes is actually different from the sound that K makes

  3. Akshat Goswami,
    English orthography certainly is fascinating. Continuing to discuss “unnecessary” letters, however, will get us nowhere. I only used the expression from Shakespeare to launch the post.

    Rather than continue this back-and-forth in the comments, I’ll write a more comprehensive post on the subject.

    Thanks for the idea.

  5. I disagree I think S is unnecessary because it copies both C and Z and gets used more which is not fair for a letter because S is 8th most common letter, C is 13th and Z is 26th, its all because of S’s fault for stealing there spotlight. C did have a unique sound which S stole from it

  6. By now, we need all three letters, c, k, and s. But c is definitely the “unnecessary” one of the lot because k and s have sounds of their own. Besides, how would you pronounce a word like” cnake”?

  8. Akshat Goswami,
    CH is not the same as C. CH is an “extra letter” that stands for a speech sound that does not have a letter in the alphabet. CH is used to represent two English speech sounds that do not have their own letters in the alphabet. CH is also an alternate spelling for the sound of K.

    The sound most commonly represented by CH is heard at the beginning of “chip” and at both ends of the word “church.” On this site, I use the symbol /tch/ to represent this sound.

    The second sound represented by CH is the sound of K, as in “chrome” and “Christmas.”

    The third sound represented by CH is another English speech sound that does not have a letter in the alphabet. This sound is /sh/ (also spelled SH) as in”chef,” “chamois,” and other words borrowed in modern times from French.