Q
Q
ISO basic Laitin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg
Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn
Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu
Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Cursive script 'q' and capital 'Q' in the U.S. D'Nealian script style

Q (named cue /ˈkjuː/[1]) is the seventeent letter o the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

History

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Egyptian hieroglyph
wj
Phoenician
qoph
Etruscan
Q
Greek
Qoppa
V24
     

The Semitic soond value o Qôp (aiblins oreeginally qaw, "cord o wool", an possibly based on an Egyptian hieroglyph) wis /q/ (voiceless uvular stop), a soond common tae Semitic leids, but nae foond in Inglis or maist Indo-European anes. In Greek, this sign as Qoppa Ϙ probably came tae represent several labialized velar stops, amang them /kʷ/ an /kʷʰ/. As a result o later soond shifts, thir soonds in Greek chynged tae /p/ an /pʰ/ respectively. Tharefore, Qoppa wis transfairmed intae twa letters: Qoppa, which stuid for a nummer anly, an Phi Φ which stuid for the aspiratit soond /pʰ/ that came tae be pronoonced /f/ in Modren Greek.

In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K an Q wur aw uised tae represent the twa soonds /k/ an /ɡ/, which wur nae differentiatit in writin. O thir, Q wis uised afore a roondit vowel (e.g. ⟨EQO⟩ 'ego'), K afore /a/, an C elsewhaur. Later, the uise o C (an its variant G) replaced maist uisages o K an Q: Q survivit anly tae represent /k/ when immediately follaeed bi a /w/ soond.[2] The Etruscans uised Q in conjunction wi V tae represent /kʷ/

Relatit letters an ither similar characters

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Computin codes

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Character Q q
Unicode name LATIN CAIPITAL LETTER Q     LATIN SMAA LETTER Q
Encodins decimal hex decimal hex
Unicode 81 U+0051 113 U+0071
UTF-8 81 51 113 71
Numeric chairacter reference Q Q q q
EBCDIC faimily 216 D8 152 98
ASCII 1 81 51 113 71
1 An aa for encodins based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins.

Ither representations

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References

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  1. "Q" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "que," op. cit.
  2. Sihler, Andrew L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (illustrated ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-19-508345-8.

Freemit airtins

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  •   Media relatit tae Q at Wikimedia Commons
  •   The dictionar defineetion o Q at Wiktionary
  •   The dictionar defineetion o q at Wiktionary


The ISO basic Laitin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Letter Q with diacritics
Ɋɋ Ƣƣ ʠ
Related