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List of English words containing Q not followed by U


In English, the letter Q is usually followed by the letter U, but there are some exceptions. The majority of these are anglicised from Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Inuktitut, or other languages which do not use the English alphabet, with Q representing a sound not found in English. For example, in the Chinese pinyin alphabet, qi is pronounced /tʃi/ by an English speaker, as pinyin uses "q" to represent the sound [tɕʰ], which is approximated as [] in English. In other examples, Q represents [q] in standard Arabic, such as in qat, faqir and Qur'ān. In Arabic, the letter ق, traditionally romanised as Q, is quite distinct from ك, traditionally romanised as K; for example, قلب /qalb/ means "heart" but كلب /kalb/ means "dog". However, alternative spellings are sometimes accepted which use K (or sometimes C) in place of Q; for example, Koran (Qur'ān) and Cairo (al-Qāhira).


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