What is the point of 'k'?

[Dadam]

But that makes you sound a bit, well, er, dopey, you might as well start saying "dur" every time you speak.

Ironic post-modern innit!
Better than sounding pretentious using the Nato phonetic alphabet, n'est-ce pas?

 

[tyred]

How could you spell OK without k?

 

[briantrumpet]

There’s a recent book about this sort of thing, heard about it on a podcast, sounds completely fascinating.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/why-q-needs-u/danny-bate/9781785307430



View: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/gone-medieval/id1564113746?i=1000738667560

Thanks - my kinda thing, and perfect timing for me to send it to a friend for her birthday, as I won't be able to get there before then.

There's a similar book, by David Crystal, called 'Spell It Out', which is a splendid read, and equally helps explain why we've got the exasperating but fascinating mishmash of spellings and pronunciations that we have in English.

 

[briantrumpet]

Kuite the kerfuffle.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

@SpokeyDokey the English language needs the K, because you don't have the CH as a K sound.
Phonetics, innit!

Face and fake. She had a face orgasm.

Lake and lace. He went swimming in a cold lace.

 

[briantrumpet]

Actually, one of the reasons we've got so many spelling oddities is that when the Latin alphabet was adopted to represent English, there were only 23 letters in it (each of which represented a 'phoneme', the smallest unit of 'sound' in language), but Old English had 41 phonemes, so they used pairs of letters (e.g 'th' & 'gh') to represent those extra phonemes.

Then add in that a lot of the now not-pronounced letters used to be pronounced ("k-not"), spelling standardisation (because of dictionaries) settling on the spelling of one area while the pronunciation spread from another (e.g. the spelling of 'bury' came from how it was pronounced in the Midlands, while the pronunciation spread from Kent, where it was pronounced as spelt, 'bery'), and you've got a right royal linguistic archaeological mess.

And then, some of the redundant letters were just mistakes - e.g the H in 'ghost' and 'ghoul' are only there because Flemish typesetters assumed that a hard G needed an H to make it hard.

It genuinely is deeply fascinating, albeit at a high price to peepul trying to lern how to spel.

 

[Sharky]

How could you spell OK without k?

Historians believe that OK is a miss spelling of
" Oll Korrect", so perhaps we should adopt AC for "All Correct".

 

[briantrumpet]

All that said, the invention of the different spellings of 'curb' and 'kerb' is just plain silly. And yes, the 'kerb' spelling was a much later spelling, whose etymology is, er, 'curb' which had been around for 200 years already, and sounds exactly the same.

 

[sevenfourate]

All that said, the invention of the different spellings of 'curb' and 'kerb' is just plain silly…..

View attachment 797360

^^…..or just phenom of modern Kulture.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

What symbol will be used for Kelvin? It’s currently K and cant use C as that is centigrade.

 

[mistyoptic]

Why is dark spelt with a K and not a C?

Because you can't C in the dark.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Darc is pronounced D’arse as in Darcy is pronounced D’arsey.

 

[AndyRM]

Bit early for Thread of the Year. Well played.

 

[steveindenmark]

In Denmark, half their alphabet is surplus to requirement. When they use the letters, they then change the sound to a different letter.

Ie. I live near HADERSLEV. Pronounced HELLESLEW.

then there is Aabenraa, pronounced Obanrow

Letters I cannot fathom after 20 years Æ, Ø, Å.

Then like all languages, they chop it to pieces so only Danes understand it.