Why do we have the letter C and K when they both sound the same?

Question

Is it just so we can have differentiate between Ch and Kh sounds?

How do you teach them without confusing people? I'm thinking youngsters.

Answer 1

In Latin, the letter C was used for the "K" sound. They used the letter K also, but not much, mostly for foreign words. Little known fact: Caesar was actually pronounced "Kaesar", hence the German title Kaiser.

In England, this pronunciation was picked up for the beginnings of English. For example, "Celtic" is actually pronounced "Keltic", despite what you hear in Boston. (The Celts lived in England.)

Meanwhile, in France, pronunciation of C began to shift toward a "ts" sound. That was also picked up in England when they adopted French words into English. In the Middle Ages, the English dropped the "t" part, and some English words now had a C that sounded like "S". Others kept a variation of the "ts" sound but spelled it "ch". Other words kept the original K sound.

So now we have both sounds for C, and we really don't need it at all, except to form "ch". Otherwise, K and S could do the job.

Answer 2

It's because our language comes from Latin and a whole lot of other languages. C and ch are Latin (Except they make a ch sound for c and a c sound for ch) also K can be a silent letter (To differentiate between words like now & know)

Answer 3

its so you can say "I have a nice pair of Nikes" in some words you are correct C and K have the same sound as in Calvin Klein but in many other words the sound is different such as sauce and soak , i know you could argue that we could use an S in place of the C in a lot of cases and the K in place of the C so the word cases would be spelt Kases not Cases but it looks strange as does sauSe in place of sauCe so this is why we have a C and a K

Answer 4

Cool, funny, the operation, could have been a caersarean k-section, no But Caesar, is Kaisar

Answer 5

So do you paint the ceiling or the keiling?