Information about Q

Q
Basic Latin 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

Q is the seventeenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue (IPA: /kju/).^[1]

History

Egyptian hieroglyph wj	Phoenician Q	Etruscan Q	Greek Qoppa
<hiero>V24</hiero>

The Semitic sound value of Qôp (perhaps originally qaw cord of wool, and possibly based on an Egyptian hieroglyph) was /q/ (voiceless uvular plosive), a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones. In Greek, this sign as Qoppa Ϙ probably came to represent several labialized velar plosives, among them /kʷ/ and /kʷʰ/. As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed to /p/ and /pʰ/ respectively. Therefore, Qoppa was transformed into two letters: Qoppa, which stood for a number only, and Phi Φ which stood for the aspirated sound /pʰ/ that came to be pronounced /f/ in Modern Greek. The Etruscans used Q only in conjunction with V to represent /kʷ/.

Usage

In most modern western languages written in Latin script, such as in Romance and Germanic languages, Q appears almost exclusively in the digraph QU, though see Q without U. In English this digraph most often denotes the cluster /kw/, except in borrowings from French where it represents /k/ as in plaque. In Italian qu represents [kw] (where [w] is an allophone of /u/); in German, /kv/; and in French, Portuguese, Occitan, Spanish, and Catalan, /k/ or /kw/. (In Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan and French, qu replaces c for /k/ before front vowels i and e, since in those contexts c is a fricative and letter 'k' is seldom used outside loan words.) In Albanian, q represents the voiceless palatal plosive, /c/. In the Aymara, Azeri, Greenlandic, Uzbek, Quechua, and Tatar languages, Q is a voiceless uvular plosive. [q] is also used in IPA for the voiceless uvular plosive, as well as in most transliteration schemes of Semitic languages for the "emphatic" qōp sound.

In Maltese and Võro, Q denotes the glottal stop.

In Chinese Hanyu Pinyin, Q is used to represent the sound [tɕʰ], which is close to English "ch" in "cheese".

In Fijian, Q represents the prenasalized voiced velar plosive [ŋɡ].

In Xhosa and Zulu, Q represents the postalveolar click [kǃ].

Q is rarely seen in a word without a U next to it in English, thus making it the second most rarely used letter in the English language.

The lowercase Q is usually written as a lowercase O with a line below it, with or without a "tail". It is usually typed without due to the major difference between the tails of the lowercase G and lowercase Q. It is usually written with the tail to distinguish from the G. Unlike the written lowercase G, which has a leftward facing tail, the Q's tail faces right. An example of the lowercase Q written from a keyboard is a "q".

Codes for computing

In Unicode the capital Q is codepoint U+0051 and the lowercase q is U+0071.

The ASCII code for capital Q is 81 and for lowercase q is 113; or in binary 01010001 and 01110001, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital Q is 216 and for lowercase q is 152.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "Q" and "q" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings of Q

See Q (disambiguation).

Trivia

• Q is the only letter that does not appear in any US state name
• People connected to an IRC-network with usermode +q are immune to bans, kicks and akicks.
• "Q" Added To Stock Ticker Symbol: When a company is involved in bankruptcy proceedings, the letter "Q" is added to the end of the company's stock ticker symbol. When a company emerges from bankruptcy, in most cases the plan of reorganization will cancel the existing equity stock.
• Q is the least used letter in the written English language
• Q is never used as the initial letter in the call sign of any radio or television station, being prohibited from such use by the ITU anywhere in the world (as of 2007).

Abbreviations

• 'Q' = Stock symbol for Qwest Communications International Inc.
• 'Q' = Qualified Developmental Disabilities Professional (aka QP or QDDP).

See also

• List of English words containing Q not followed by U

The ISO basic Latin 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 ʠɊɋ? Two-letter combinations Qa Qb Qc Qd Qe Qf Qg Qh Qi Qj Qk Ql Qm Qn Qo Qp Qq Qr Qs Qt Qu Qv Qw Qx Qy Qz QA QB QC QD QE QF QG QH QI QJ QK QL QM QN QO QP QQ QR QS QT QU QV QW QX QY QZ Letter-digit & Digit-letter combinations                 Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 Q8 Q9                 0Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q 5Q 6Q 7Q 8Q 9Q history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters

References

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

Q is the seventeenth letter of the English alphabet. It can also refer to:

In media:

• Q (TV series), a BBC2 comedy series that ran between 1969 and 1983
• Q (magazine), a British music magazine
• Q (1982 film), also known as

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Latin alphabet
Child systems Numerous: see Alphabets derived from the Latin
Sister systems Cyrillic
Coptic
Armenian
Runic/Futhark
Unicode range See Latin characters in Unicode
ISO 15924 Latn

Note
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A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a^[1] (IPA: /eɪ/), plural aes, as, or a's.
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B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee or occasionally be (IPA: /biː/), plural bees.
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C in copyright mark]]

This article is about the letter. For other uses, see C (disambiguation).

For technical reasons, C# redirects here.

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For the emoticon :D'', see Emoticon. (For technical reasons, :D brings you here.)

Basic Latin 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  
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E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (IPA: /iː/), plural es or ees (also written E's, Es, e's, etc.).
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F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef (IPA: /ɛf/), or eff when used as a verb.
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G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (IPA /dʒiː/).
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H is the eighth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled aitch,^[1] pronounced IPA /eɪtʃ/ in most dialects, though in Irish and Indian English it is generally haitch
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I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is i [aɪ].

History

Egyptian hieroglyph ˁ Proto-Semitic Y Phoenician Y Etruscan I Greek Iota
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J is the tenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added. Its name in English is jay IPA: /dʒeɪ/.
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K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (IPA /keɪ/).^[1]

History and usage

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L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is el (IPA: /ɛl/).^[1]

History

The letter L
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M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em (IPA: /ɛm/).^[1]

History

The letter M
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N is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en (IPA: /ɛn/).^[1]

History of the form

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O is the fifteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o (IPA /oʊ/), plural oes.
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P is the sixteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee or occasionally pe (IPA: /piː/)^[1].
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R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar (IPA: /ɑr/: [ɑː]
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S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (IPA: /ɛs/), generally es- when part of a compound word, plural esses.
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T is the twentieth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee or occasionally te (IPA: /tiː/).
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U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u (IPA: /juː/).
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V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee or occasionally ve (IPA: /viː/).
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W is the twenty-third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled double-u.^[1] Along with Y, it is one of two letters to serve as a representation for both vowel and consonant sounds.
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X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ex (IPA: /ɛks/),^[1] plural exes.
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Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled wye or occasionally wy (IPA: /waɪ/), plural wyes.
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Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the modern Latin alphabet.

In many dialects of English, the letter's name is zed (IPA: /zɛd/), reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (see below).
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Latin alphabet
Child systems Numerous: see Alphabets derived from the Latin
Sister systems Cyrillic
Coptic
Armenian
Runic/Futhark
Unicode range See Latin characters in Unicode
ISO 15924 Latn

Note
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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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This chart shows concisely the most common way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is applied to represent the English language.

See International Phonetic Alphabet for English for a more complete version and Pronunciation respelling for English for phonetic
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