Qa (Cyrillic)

Qa (Ԛ ԛ; italics: Ԛ ԛ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Its form is based on the Latin letter Q (Q q). The lowercase form can look like a reversed Cyrillic letter Р, and the uppercase as well depending on font. Qa is used in the Cyrillic alphabet of the Kurdish language, where it represents the voiceless uvular plosive /q/. It was also used to represent /q’/, the uvular ejective stop (now represented by Ҟ ҟ), in the Translation Committee's Abkhaz alphabet, published around the turn of the 20th century, and to represent /q/ in three old Ossetian alphabets (now represented by Хъ хъ). This character appeared in newspapers and articles such as 1955's Кӧрдо or Kurdo. In the 1930s, Qa was used in the Cyrillic script for the Assyrian language (Suret) in the USSR and represented the voiceless velar plosive. The letter was also used in the scrapped version of the Azerbaijani alphabet. It was, however, eliminated and replaced by Ҝ in Dagestan.