Q

Q
ISO basic Laitin alphabet

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

Egyptian hieroglyph
wj

Phoenician
qoph

Etruscan
Q

Greek
Qoppa

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

Computin codes

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

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Quebec	– – · –

		[[File:Sign language {{{fingerspelling}}}.svg\|90px]]
Seegnal banner	Banner semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspellin)	Braille dots-12345

References

↑ "Q" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "que," op. cit.
↑ 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

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 v t e
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
Derivations Diacritics History ISO/IEC 646 Leet o letters Numerals Palaeography Punctuation Unicode

[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.

[1]

[2]