New Books in History Danny Bate, "Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them" (Bonnier Books, 2025)
Mar 22, 2026
Danny Bate, a linguist and writer who popularizes historical languages, walks through the surprising journeys of our letters. He teases stories like a possible inventor of G, why Q pairs with U, and how direction, shape and names shifted over centuries. Short, curious tales about silent E, soft C, evolving uppercase vs lowercase, and the late arrivals J and W make the alphabet feel alive.
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Alphabet Order Is Ancient And Mysterious
- The alphabet bundles four linked features: sound value, shape, name, and order, and these co-evolved over 4,000 years.
- Early alphabet fragments (school exercises) show order existed from the start, but the original mnemonic logic is now lost.
Why Western Scripts Read Left To Right
- Direction of writing changed as scripts passed hands: Phoenician right-to-left; Greeks flipped to left-to-right, likely after they began writing vowels.
- The flip influenced letter shapes (e.g., B's bulges pointed the writing direction) and set the legacy for Latin/English.
How Soft And Hard C Developed Across Languages
- Soft and hard C arose from a Latin k that changed before front vowels; different daughter languages regularized different outcomes.
- Bate traces kentum→cent→cent/cent variations (Italian ch, Old French t, Modern French s) causing English C to double for /k/ and /s/.
