wordy wednesday..."q" {january 11, 2023}

Growing up I always learned that q and u always go together. You see a q and the letter u will be right behind it.

The occurrence of the letters q and u together in English goes back to Latin, where they represented the \kw\ sound. In the Romance languages that descend from Latin, the qu combination is retained but in some of them (and especially French) it may represent just the \k\ sound, as in quiche.

My first introduction to q without a u came happened a long time ago when I was learning about Australia in a Social Studies class and saw an ad for QANTAS, the Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services. 

More recently while watching evening TV, the numerous commercials are about medications and these medications all have q-no-u. This usage kind of rocks the status quo in the “qu” world. Nothing wrong with it, just something new and different.

Leqvio

Kisqali

Rinvoq

Cibinqo

Quviviq

The automobile industry is also jumping on this bandwagon with the Hyundai Ioniq and the Cadillac Celestiq. 

As language becomes more global, more words have been introduced in the English language that have the “non-traditional” q usage. These words mainly come from the Middle Eastern/Muslim, African, Hebrew, and Chinese languages. And that’s good. It leads to learning and thinking about the world, expressing ideas, and being able to talk to and understand those from cultures other than yours.

And one more word to think about, queue 😁