Design of the Cyrillic letter Qa /Ԛ /ԛ

Tofu Type Foundry · May 14

The Cyrillic letter Qa /Ԛ /ԛ has multiple forms, according to it’s Wikipedia page. It doesn’t explain when the different variants are used though (like how the double-storey /g is often used in humanist typefaces or how /Д has a localized form for Bulgarian). The text just says it changes “depending on font”. Does anyone know why?

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye · May 15

The most recent used form is just like the Latin Q and q. It’s probably best to use that form in general.

That’s the form used in Kurdish in the second half of the 20th century in the USSR or more recently in the rare cases where Cyrillic is used (like so).

The variant forms used in Abkhaz in the late 19th and early 20th century don’t seem to have clear rules.

The reversed-P form, like ꟼ, appears on figure 37 in the Unicode proposal, on the coat of arms (shield) of the Abkhaz SSR (circa 1924). Some versions of the coat of arms also have a large-q capital form and some the "normal" Q.

The large-q capital form seems to have been common in Abkhaz, can be found in the alphabet primer Д. И. Гулиа, К. Д. Мачавариани, Абхазская азбука, 1892 ([1]) and was used for example in the 1912 Abkhaz translation of the Gospel (in small caps)

or in all-caps in Д. I. Гулia, Абаӡӡеі, 1923.

The lowercase can also found as a small capital reversed-P in a couple of places like in Abkhaz in А. М. Ч̆оч̆уа, Аҧсуа анбан, Абхазская азбука, Тифлис,‎ 1909 ([2]) but the normal shape is used as well in that book, or in the 1957 Siabandov & Chachan Armenian-Kurdish dictionary alphabet chart (shown in the Unicode proposal in the Hassanpour 1992 sample), but the normal q is used elsewhere in the dictionary.

Ossetian doesn’t seem to have used those variants (looking at Sjögren or Miller works, or the Рӕстꚉінад [Rastdzinad] newspaper, like here on page 3) but if one can dig up more examples it may appear in there or not.

John Hudson · May 14

I don’t recall seeing it taking any form other than that of the corresponding Latin Q/q. It and the Wa W/w are both straight borrowings from the Latin script. Any idiosyncratic forms were likely typeface-specific and not generaralised to any kind of pattern of use.

Igor Freiberger · May 15

It seems the English Wikipedia article for Cyrillic Q/q is plainly wrong. It's a low quality article with only one reference —and it points to a proposal where there is no alternative Q/q.

This letter is not in use anymore. It was only present in Kurdish, but in a previous version of the alphabet. It was also used in older Ossetian and Abkhazian from the pre-Soviet era. Thus samples and information are sparse. One can check the same article in Wikipedia with other languages, where there is no mention to an alternative Q/q.

Maybe the Wikipedia author misread the table from the proposal (bottom of page 24) where there is a glyph resembling a reversed P, but it was part of old Armenian-Kurdish alphabet, not a Cyrillic variation. Some confusion with ƣ, used in Kazakhstan in 1930s, is also possible.

Tofu Type Foundry · May 15

Thank you all for the clarification! This is starting to make sense now—and exactly what I was hoping to learn

Tural Alisoy · May 15

You can use it as Q with ease. As shown on Wikipedia, its phonetic value and historical evolution support this usage.

John Hudson · May 15

Was hoping @Denis Moyogo Jacquerye would chime in.

Design of the Cyrillic letter Qa /Ԛ /ԛ

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