Qaf (Cyrillic)

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Heading=Cyrillic letter Qaf


uuc=049A|ulc=049BThe Cyrillic letter Қ, қ (in Kazakh: " _kk. Qa") is a К with a descender. It is used in a number of Turkic languages spoken on the territory of the former Soviet Union, including Tajik, Kazakh, Uzbek, Uighur and several smaller languages (Karakalpak, Tofa), where it represents a voiceless uvular plosive /q/. Since /q/ is represented by the letter ق "qāf" in the Arabic alphabet, Қ is sometimes referred to as "Cyrillic Qaf."

The letter is also used in some non-Turkic languages, where it may represent other sounds. For example, it is used in Abkhaz to represent a voiceless velar plosive (/k/). (Plain Cyrillic "К" is used to represent /kʼ/.)

It was introduced in 1905 for the spelling of Abkhaz. From 1928 to 1938, Abkhaz was spelled with the Latin alphabet, and the corresponding letter was a latin K with descender.

Its ISO 9 transliteration is "ISOtranslit|ķ|ab" ("k" with cedilla), and is so transliterated for Abkhaz, while the common Kazakh and Uzbek romanization is "q".

See also

*Ka
*Kazakh language
*Uzbek language
*Abkhaz language