Qa (Cyrillic)

Qa (Ԛ, ԛ) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the voiceless uvular stop /q/ in languages like Abkhaz, where it is a fundamental sound. This letter is used in alphabets derived from Cyrillic, specifically designed for languages spoken primarily in the Caucasus region and some parts of Siberia.

Its visual form is similar to the Latin letter Q. In some typefaces, it might be nearly indistinguishable from the Latin Q, while in others, subtle differences, such as a more vertical tail or a slightly different angle, may be present.

Historically, the need for Qa arose as the standard Cyrillic alphabet lacked a character to properly represent the /q/ sound crucial to several languages it was intended to transcribe. Thus, Qa became one of the augmented Cyrillic letters created to accommodate these phonetic requirements.

The lowercase form, ԛ, mirrors the uppercase form but is smaller in size. Both the uppercase and lowercase forms are used in orthography following standard Cyrillic capitalization rules. The letter's primary function remains the accurate representation of the /q/ phoneme within the specific language's writing system.