Q with stroke
Q with stroke (Ꝗ, ꝗ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from writing the letter Q with the addition of a bar through the letter's descender. The letter was used by scribes during the Middle Ages, where it was employed primarily as an abbreviation[1]—a modern parallel of this would be abbreviating the word "and" with an ampersand (&). The letter was also used to write some modern languages. Between 1928 and 1938 it was used in the Lezgin language, but that language now uses a Cyrillic alphabet without the letter. The Dargin language was also written with ꝗ before 1938.
When used to write the Latin language, ꝗ could be used alone or as part of a word. Alone, it stood for quam; as part of a word, it stood for either quan- (as in ꝗdo for quando) or qui- (as in ꝗlꝫ for quilibet).[1] In the French language, ꝗ was used as an abbreviation for the word que;[2] in Irish, it abbreviated ar.[1] Closely related is the letter Q with diagonal stroke (Ꝙ, ꝙ), which stood alone to abbreviate quod, qui and que in Latin.[1] In Portuguese, ꝙ also abbreviated quem.[1]
Computer encoding
Ꝗ, along with other letters of interest to scholars of medieval manuscripts, was added to the Unicode Standard in 2006 after a request by Michael Everson.[1] It resides in the Latin Extended-D block of the Basic Multilingual Plane.
Preview | Ꝗ | ꝗ | Ꝙ | ꝙ | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Q WITH STROKE |
LATIN SMALL LETTER Q WITH STROKE |
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Q WITH DIAGONAL STROKE |
LATIN SMALL LETTER Q WITH DIAGONAL STROKE | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 42838 | U+A756 | 42839 | U+A757 | 42840 | U+A758 | 42841 | U+A759 |
UTF-8 | 234 157 150 | EA 9D 96 | 234 157 151 | EA 9D 97 | 234 157 152 | EA 9D 98 | 234 157 153 | EA 9D 99 |
Numeric character reference | Ꝗ |
Ꝗ |
ꝗ |
ꝗ |
Ꝙ |
Ꝙ |
ꝙ |
ꝙ |
ISO 5426-2 | 104 | 68 | 120 | 78 |
References
- ^ a b c d e f Everson, Michael; et al. (2006-01-30). "Proposal to add medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF). The Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 2017-02-01.
- ^ du Bellay, Joachim (1549). "La Deffence, et illvstration de la langue francoyse". Wikisource (in French). Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2017-02-01.