Why Q Needs U

by Danny Bate

'A breathtaking adventure through the alphabet... An absolutely delightful read, filled with jewels of lightly worn scholarship and dazzling insight. I just couldn't recommend it more highly.' Stephen Fry

'An excellent read.' Susie Dent

'You'll never look at a keyboard the same way after reading Danny Bate's fascinating linguistic history.' Sunday Times

Why does 'W' sounds like 'double U'?
What has the letter 'Q' got to do with monkeys?
Why are the 'C's in circus pronounced differently?
What's the point of the second 'N' in the author's first name, 'Danny'?
And why does 'Q' need to be followed by 'U'?

Every letter you're reading right now has a fascinating story to tell, having been on a long linguistic, historical, political and social journey.

In Why Q Needs U, linguistic expert Danny Bate takes readers on a fascinating odyssey through the English alphabet, diving into history, archaeology, politics and linguistics to discover where we get our writing from. Sharing fun facts and revealing the alphabet's hidden mechanisms, he explains where we get our letters from and why the English language uses them so strangely.

Explaining - and defending - the peculiar way English today uses our ancient letters, Bate's witty and entertaining book will help readers spot connections in languages across the world and inspire a newfound sense of wonder for the letters we use every day.

'Charming' The Economist

*We are aware of previous formatting issues in the eBook edition when downloading on Kindle but these have now been rectified*

Genres: Nonfiction, Language, History, Linguistics, Writing, World History, Audiobook

384 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 2, 2025

About the author

Danny Bate is a linguist, writer, researcher and broadcaster, who holds three degrees in the field of linguistics, from BA to PhD. His specialism is language history, and this is the fuel of his public content that informs readers, listeners and viewers about humanity's incredible linguistic talents. His debut book, 'Why Q Needs U', was released in the UK in October 2025, and was hailed by Sir Stephen Fry as a "wonderful achievement".

Reviews

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Danny Bates knows his alphabetical history. Each chapter discusses a separate letter of our alphabet, running from A to Z. He purports to present a stripped-down version of history, but it seems actually quite exhaustive (and exhausting - I don't recommend trying to blitz through it. Take it one letter at a time.)

We all know that English is a devilishly difficult language for ESL people to master. There's adequate fluency, and then there's the knowledge of native speakers; we don't really notice how we understand all the strange exceptions to grammatical rules, spelling and pronunciation. This book will make you appreciate how much you know as a native speaker of English that you don't know you know.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and could not put it down. I am thankful that the demands of the week allowed me to push through to the end.

This book is a history of the English Alphabet. Why the 26 letters? Why their particular order? Why do the letters look as they do? By what processes did the English Alphabet assume its current form? The author is a Ph.D.linguist who knows more about alphabets that all of my family and professional colleagues together. By a quirk of nature - or good editorial support - he also writes well.

I approached this book with interest but also with caution and concern. I have worked with words my entire life and have read extensively for personal and professional reasons. I have taught my students to write papers and analyze cases for a long time. I even play “spelling bee” in the NYT every day as aggressively as I can. I love working with words and have been called a geek, even though I know of that word’s roots in traditional circus characters.

My caution and concern come from the thousands of years over which English has developed, largely with no central direction and through the efforts of millions of speakers around the world. There might be a bit more going on here than I could handle in a single volume.

There was no need for my concern. The book was a joy to read and I cannot think a book where there has been more interesting points hanging around on each than there are in this book. The book has 26 chapters and an epilogue. There is a chapter for each letter in the alphabet and they are presented in order. The story, as you might imagine, goes back to the time of ancient Egypt and progresses forward through different languages, especially Greek and Latin, and up through into the history of what became England after the fall of the Roman Empire.

I could not possibly convey how interesting each chapter was. I worried about trying to remember all the details until I realized that there would be no chance of that - there is just too much going on. Everyone who reads a lot and thinks about what they read will find something amazing here. I am certain I will be rereading this book.

On a lark, I set one goal for the book - to understand after reading the book why the NYT Spelling Bee game excludes the letter “S” from its daily set of seven letters. (If you play the game, you know what I am talking about - there have been a small number of exceptions to this exclusion.). Well, Dr. Bate’s book passed the test and once I finished the chapter on “S” (chapter 19), I had a better sense of all the reasons why the NYT excludes “S” from Spelling Bee.

That is all I will say here. If you love words, you may well love this book. I highly recommend it.

[Bibi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Matt's Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

I should probably declare a conflict of interest: Danny and I shared seven years in the same school tutor group. That said, Why Q Needs U, his impassioned homage to the English alphabet, is a marvellous read by any measure.

The book's greatest strength is its accessibility. Bate unpacks linguistic complexities with stark clarity and playful flair, never condescending to the reader. We're guided through an eventful history from the Lower Nile to Anglo-Saxon shores, anticlockwise through ancient Mediterranean civilisations. The whole way we are encouraged by our guide to make strange enunciations, as I inadvertently demonstrated on several trains.

Bate demonstrates how oddities of English spelling stem from the language's honourable promiscuity (if such a concept can be entertained). English has stolen liberally from other tongues, yet lovingly maintained their words - and letters. We cling to Q, for instance, from Latin and French, even while languages like Italian (which sound somewhat more like their spelling) have made it redundant. Much of modern English orthography owes its quirks to the Norman conquest (not conkwest), though Viking raiders and Greek retrofitting also leave marks.

Sound change, Bate reminds us, always precedes spelling - for reasons like identity and loyalty. Consider the battle between American and British English over -ize versus -ise. 'Language will always follow power and prestige,' he writes. Yet the efforts of lexicographers to reflect language as it is spoken, rather than as elites wish it to be, show how change always seeps in from the periphery. The book reveals that writing is shaped by passion, ideology, upbringing, and a smorgasbord of other forces. The conveyance of sound is sometimes barely involved. Take the schwa: that elusive ‘uh’ vowel in words like suppose and about, which most English speakers will scarcely realise exists.

Why Q Needs U is a trove of eureka moments (a Greek coinage) brought together by a foremost scholar of our language.

[procrastination and escapism]

Birthday present from my sister! Hope to read soon :)

[Isabella Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

So interesting!!

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read (or listen) for anyone interested in linguistics - a sort of history of the English language through the alphabet. Fascinating.

[Tobias Ratschiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever wondered why y looks like a strange hybrid of v and u? No? Me neither.

I’ve always loved words, but for some reason, I never paid much attention to the small building blocks that make them up.

Why Q Needs U takes a loving look at those letters. It turns out their origin stories are captivating and full of surprises—and the way their development intertwines with the history of civilization makes for a fantastic read.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

so hard to pick a favourite letter after all of this

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audio book
Danny Bate reader and author.

What a delight!

26 chapters devoted to each of the 26 letters of our alphabet, their origins and history and uses over time and today. And they are discussed with wit and humour. Now even a language nerd like me finds 26 letters a few too many and the last 6 letters are a bit dull. But they also have interesting histories and stories.

[Elizabeth]

As heard on Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics (110: The history of the history of Indo-European - Interview with Danny Bate)

Before there was English, or Latin, or Czech, or Hindi, there was a language that they all have in common, which we call Proto-Indo-European. Linguists have long been fascinated by the quest to get a glimpse into what Proto-Indo-European must have looked like through careful comparisons between languages we do have records for, and this very old topic is still undergoing new discoveries.

In this episode, your host Gretchen McCulloch gets enthusiastic about the process of figuring out Proto-Indo-European with Dr. Danny Bate, public linguist, host of the podcast A Language I Love Is..., and author of the book Why Q Needs U. We talk about why figuring out the word order of a 5000-year-old language is harder than figuring out the sounds, and a great pop linguistics/history book we've both been reading that combines recent advances in linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence to reexamine where these ancient Proto-Indo-European folks lived: Proto by Laura Spinney. We also talk about Danny's own recent book on the history of the alphabet, featuring fun facts about C, double letters, and izzard!

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://pod.link/1186056137/episode/d...
Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/8007798...

Announcements:
In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about celebratory days, years, decades, and more with some relationship to linguistics! We recently learned that people in the UK have been celebrating National Linguistics Day on November 26th and many lingcommers are excited about the idea of taking those celebrations international: World Linguistics Day, anyone? What we learned putting this episode together is that celebratory days take off when groups of people decide to make them happen so…let's see how many different locations around the world we can wish each other Happy World Linguistics Day from this year!

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds: https://www.patreon.com/posts/142860621

For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/8007796...
https://soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm/1...

[Matthew Whyndham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and entertaining. It’s probably made me less of a pedant. Our letters (and spelling) are not mechanical components with fixed instructions for their use but more like lumps of jelly or liquid which are subject to social forces. Unless, that is, you have a big design authority such as a state sponsored committee on writing (see communist China, Korea, And a few other examples). Because English is multi-territorial now, we’ve probably gone past the point of it ever having a supreme controller like that.

It got slightly repetitive though, as pretty much every letter had to account for the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans/Latin, Middle English, Printing etc. I wonder what a chronological presentation would have looked like, with the letters and languages therein in as required? Probably inaccessible to most readers at the beginning, hence the ABC chapter order that we have.

Also, what about text messaging (and its spelling microcultures), emojis, and other contemporary trends? Aren’t these adding other forces to the mix?

Rite, θatz unuφ wafflng frum mee, off tü dvelup mi own spelling stile, synts whot we hav is such a mess!

[Kaleem · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because I heard Dr Bate interviewed about it (and his other work) on an economist podcast, and it sounded like exactly the type of book I’d enjoy. I wish I enjoyed it more though. Unusually for me, it actually gets too into the weeds on some points, and the narrative thread gets lost/I got bored. The structure of the chapters becomes a bit monotonous/predictable and by R I was kinda wishing the book to be over. Still, I learnt a lot and I think there are good times to recommend it to someone - I can imagine it being a great source of comprehension or fun reading for school kids if you use it chapter at a time.

[Brian Ku · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating and well researched, just a little bit too much for me. Prob would have been better on a physical book instead of Kindle/audiobook. Doesn't help that I'm not familiar with Latin, Greek, or French so it was hard to visualize what he was describing.
Similar to Kingdom of Characters.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history of the alphabet, each letter at the time. Book wasn't bad, with some interesting facts and tales, though some bits a little bland in the telling. Suitable for both teens and adults.

[Kateryna · Rating 5 out of 5]

one more reason to hate the french (and latin fanatics) lmao

very accessible, good both for non-linguists and ppl with background knowledge. amazing read!

[Izzy Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little repetitive but still fascinating

[David Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy listening to Dr Danny Bate's podcast, A Language I Love Is, so was excited to hear that he had a book appearing, especially as it takes on a subject that sticks out as a problem with English - the spelling.

Compared with other languages, one can make a case that English spelling is irregular, confusing, and hard to learn. Indeed, there's an old joke that English spelling is so weird that you could spell there word "fish" as "ghoti". This has always annoyed me. Yes, those letters are used in various places for sounds that could make "enough". But nobody who can read English would see them and hear that. You would pronounce those letters as something like "goatee".

But that leaves the question, why? Danny Bate sets out to explain the facts. As part of that, he works his way through the modern English alphabet, explaining where the letters came from - tracing the story back into Latin, Greek and Phoenician, and ending up with the early Semitic language speakers who adapted many of the symbols from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. (So the story goes back 3000+ years!)

As a non-linguist, it was a revelation to me just how much of what now seems to be so fixed - what could be more solid than the alphabet? - was in flux for centuries, in fact till very recently, with letters being repurposed for new sounds, dropped, reinstated, reused and spun off from one another (so, G started as C, with the little crosspiece added to form a new letter). Along the way a few were lost completely (please hold poor ð and þ in your thoughts).

The history of the letters - one per chapter - naturally draws us into an explanation of what sounds they were used for, in Greek, Latin and English Old, Middle and ModernIt is a complex picture, depending on some understanding of how the sounds for which the letters stand are each made - what the tongue and throat are doing, and how changes in that can chance pronunciations, sometimes resulting in tectonic shifts which leave their traces in systematically wrong-seeming spellings. Bate is very good at giving the reader enough to understand his point, but without turning the book into an instruction manual. (It may help in though, if you can read the book in a place where you can say the sounds out loud.)

The story reminded me, somewhat, of archeology or geology, a process of unearthing layers of deposits giving clues to speech and spelling. For English, that means repeated outside influences from Norse, Norman French, Latin, the invention of printing and centuries of social and political change. These resulted in consistent patterns which can still be traced in modern spellings (though every rule has an exception, as do many of the exceptions). It's a fascinating story and the conclusions are often deeply satisfying as some apparent anomaly becomes clear.

If I've made all that sound terribly dry, it's not. This is a fun book with some amazing facts hidden away. After reading it you will, for example, know more about some of the hieroglyphs you may see on Only Connect. Why Q Needs U would make an excellent Christmas present for any word nerds in the family, as well as potentially helping settle family arguments, if your family is prone to argue about things like "s" or "z" spellings or why "W" sounds like "double U".

Or, indeed, why Q needs U at all.

Strongly recommended.