Q
Q
ISO basic Laitin alphabet
AaBbCcDdEeFfGg
HhIiJjKkLlMmNn
OoPpQqRrSsTtUu
VvWwXxYyZz

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 eedit

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 eedit

Computin codes eedit

CharacterQq
Unicode nameLATIN CAIPITAL LETTER Q    LATIN SMAA LETTER Q
Encodinsdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode81U+0051113U+0071
UTF-8815111371
Numeric chairacter referenceQQqq
EBCDIC faimily216D815298
ASCII 1815111371
1 An aa for encodins based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins.

Ither representations eedit

References eedit

  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 eedit

  • 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
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz
Letter Q with diacritics
ɊɋƢƣʠ
Related