If you’ve ever wondered why queen, quick, and quest all seem glued to a “u,” blame history — not grammar. The pairing goes back to Latin, where the letter “Q” was always pronounced kw. When English borrowed thousands of Latin and French words after the Norman Conquest, it also borrowed this habit. Over time, “q” became a bit helpless on its own, needing “u” to keep its familiar kw sound. That’s why we write question and quality instead of kwestion or kwality. But there are rare rebels: words like Iraq, Qatar, and Qibla come from Arabic and don’t follow the English rule. So while “q” and “u” may look like a package deal, their partnership is more historical than grammatical — a friendship formed in ancient Rome and still going strong in modern classrooms.