Q

Q (named cue /ˈkjuː/) is the seventeent letter o the ISO basic Latin alphabet. History 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. The Etruscans uised Q in conjunction wi V tae represent /kʷ/ Relatit letters an ither similar characters Q̵ q̵ : Latin letter Q wi stroke ʠ : Latin letter Q wi huik Ɋ ɋ : Latin letter Q wi huik tail Ԛ ԛ : Cyrillic letter Qa Ќ, ќ : Cyrillic letter Kje Қ қ : Cyrillic letter Ka wi descender Computin codes 1 An aa for encodins based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins. Ither representations References Freemit airtins Media relatit tae Q at Wikimedia Commons The dictionar defineetion o Q at Wiktionary The dictionar defineetion o q at Wiktionary