Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by mudshark

Hmm, thot it were hwta sunnandæg, but then, there's no 'Q' in thet'un, so I suppose it wouldn't count.

*eyebrow*

Intriguing.

I read that thing about qhythsonthyd on wiktionary, so it's probably wrong.

Originally Posted by mudshark

As mentioned above, Q does occur independently in languages other than English, mostly non-Indo-European ones. The Q-U combination seems to have been imported from Latin via Old French, circa the Norman Invasion in 1066, and has stuck around more out of inertia than anything else.

English is like that -- has lots of relics, artifacts and plain old souvenirs lying around and cluttering things up for no good reason other than that people are used to it being that way and resist changing.

Like "artic"/"arctic"....