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What is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed?
A friend told me that the English word queue is the only word whose pronunciation remains the same when the last four letters are removed.
Which word is pronounced the same as queue?
Cue typically refers to a signal that encourages someone to take an action, while queue indicates an ordered line or file. Both cue and queue are pronounced like the letter Q, and are considered to be homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings.
Which letter is silent in queue?
There are only two silent letters in “queue”, actually: the U coming after Q, and the final E. You see, “queue” was originally a French word, and in Old French, it was pronounced something like /kewə/ (roughly kay-wuh) or /køə/ – meaning that the only silent letter was the U coming directly after the Q.
Is the word queue French?
The word queue stems from the twelfth century and refers to the Old French word cue, coe, or queue, which means “tail.” In the fifteenth century, the term reportedly transitioned to queue, also meaning “tail.” The French term originally comes from the Latin word coda (dialectal variant or alternative form of cauda).
Why do we pronounce queue as Q?
Because queue in English is actually a French word. Queue means tail in French, and in French spelling, there are no words starting with Q that do not come with an U, excepted maybe for rare Arabic loan words. QU is a digraph in French, it works as a single unit.
What is unique about the word queue?
You’re not alone in thinking that “queue” is a strange word, especially for English language. It has four vowels but is pronounced exactly as a single letter — Q [kyu].
Why is the word queue spelled like that?
“Queue” is actually a borrowed-word from French, hence the weird pronounciation in relation to spelling since English and French phonetics are not the same. It just so happens that “queue” is pronounced the same way as the letter “Q”. However, a consonant needs a vowel to make a sound and therefore, a word.
Why is queue spelled like that?
The first U is there to support the convention that, in English, Q is always followed by a U. The E is there to support the convention that the U is always followed by a vowell. The sound to follow is U, which is written UE. Thus queue …