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It's a common convention for words that end in a "short vowel" followed by a hard /k/ (IPA) sound to be spelled with ck, e.g., "back," "block," "stick," "truc."

It's a common convention for words that end in a "short vowel" followed by a hard /k/ (IPA) sound to be spelled with ck, e.g., "back," "block," "stick," "truc." It's not a convention always followed, though; see "book," "music." > Is it like in Dutch or Norwegian that two consonants are enclosing short vowel while one consonant makes long vowel? Yes, that is generally the rule. Usually, a vowel followed by a consonant followed by e (/a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e) will produce the "long" version of that vowel. To signify that it's pronounced as a short vowel, many words have doubled consonants, e.g., "plate" (long a) vs "platter" (short a). When a word ends in a short vowel and a k, a lot of words unnecessarily double it to a ck, e.g., "trick," "back," etc. However, this is more of a guideline than a rule; there are many exceptions to it. For example, "paste" has the a, then two consonants, then e; due to the doubled consonants, it "should" have a short vowel, but it actually has a long vowel. And many words with short vowels don't have doubled consonants; for example, the a in "magic" is short rather than long, and the first a in "Japanese" is short (you would expect "Jappanese"). The e in "medical" and the i in "amicable" are both tonic, short vowels. > I still do not know what is difference between "c" and "k" in English language. "K" always makes a hard /k/ sound. "c" makes a hard /k/ sound before a, o, and u (e.g., car, acorn, cute), but makes a soft /s/ sound before e, i, and y (celery, peace, cinders, cylinder). With Latin and Greek words, ae and oe are both treated as e, so Caesar, and coelacanth have soft C sounds. However, there are exceptions; sometimes it makes a k sound even before an e (e.g., sceptical, Celtic, loci), and sometimes it makes a soft c sound where a hard one is expected (e.g. facade). English spelling is very irregular. Much of this irregularity is to reflect etymology, i.e., we borrowed the word without changing the spelling, or only changed the spelling a little bit.

ncpa-cpl 3y ago
> sometimes it makes a soft c sound where a hard one is expected (e.g. facade). Just adding, in the case of Facade, is very similar to the french façade. So I guess the ç cedille was lost in translation. French uses the ç to make the ça and ço syllables change from /k/ to /s/.
- trealira 3y ago
  Yes, you're right. It used to be more common to write it with the cedilla/cedille, but over time it's become more common to write it as a normal c. Similarly, for the phrase "deja vu", it used to be more common to write it with the accent marks (déjà-vu), whereas I usually see it written now as deja vu. And I see same thing with café being written as cafe.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    English in general seems to "abhor" accent marks and they are seen as "style" rather than orthography/punctuation. It's interesting because it came up recently that the New York Times had to apologize that their style guide required the removal of all accent marks and that drastically changed the meaning of a bunch of Vietnamese names and words they printed in an article (insultingly so). One of the few notorious style guides the other way, for instance, is the more "upper-crust" New Yorker requires a diaresis mark in words such as "coöperation" (which is useful when discussing say a "chicken coop" versus a "chicken coöp" versus a "chicken coup", all things with very different meanings). To a lot of Americans diaresis marks look unnatural and that becomes one of the sillier markers that the New Yorker is "upper-crust" and "fancy", but teachers for decades have thought they would be a great addition to the language if adopted more widely.

ncpa-cpl 3y ago

> sometimes it makes a soft c sound where a hard one is expected (e.g. facade). Just adding, in the case of Facade, is very similar to the french façade. So I guess the ç cedille was lost in translation. French uses the ç to make the ça and ço syllables change from /k/ to /s/.

trealira 3y ago
Yes, you're right. It used to be more common to write it with the cedilla/cedille, but over time it's become more common to write it as a normal c. Similarly, for the phrase "deja vu", it used to be more common to write it with the accent marks (déjà-vu), whereas I usually see it written now as deja vu. And I see same thing with café being written as cafe.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  English in general seems to "abhor" accent marks and they are seen as "style" rather than orthography/punctuation. It's interesting because it came up recently that the New York Times had to apologize that their style guide required the removal of all accent marks and that drastically changed the meaning of a bunch of Vietnamese names and words they printed in an article (insultingly so). One of the few notorious style guides the other way, for instance, is the more "upper-crust" New Yorker requires a diaresis mark in words such as "coöperation" (which is useful when discussing say a "chicken coop" versus a "chicken coöp" versus a "chicken coup", all things with very different meanings). To a lot of Americans diaresis marks look unnatural and that becomes one of the sillier markers that the New Yorker is "upper-crust" and "fancy", but teachers for decades have thought they would be a great addition to the language if adopted more widely.