In English, the letter Q is almost always followed immediately by the letter U, e.g. quiz, quarry, question, squirrel. However, there are some exceptions. The majority of these are anglicised from Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Inuktitut, or other languages that do not use the English alphabet, with Q often representing a sound not found in English. For example, in the Chinese pinyin alphabet, qi is pronounced /tʃi/ (similar to "chi" in English) by an English speaker, as pinyin uses "q" to represent the sound [tɕʰ], which is approximated as [tʃ] (ch) in English. In other examples, Q represents [q] in standard Arabic, such as in qat and faqir. 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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[–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Super stoked to know that "jelq" made the list.

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  • This will be handy for my next game of Scrobble.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    As pointed out in another thread, these are almost all inherited/adopted words from other languages.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    i would have excluded website or company names from this list

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  • 17 comments in c/wikipedia@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I see you recently lost in Scrabble

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Most of what I saw was specifically NOT an English word but a word from some other language....?!

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Or brand names, or initialisms. Or literally the letter "Q" itself. All there just to bulk out the list to actually be long enough to have to scroll.

    These guys must suck at Scrabble.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They're probably great at Scrabble if they use the official rules because the official rules allow a lot of "words" which really are not English words.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Yeah, the word "qi" is a legitimate word in Scrabble, and my family learning that fact marked the end of me having fun playing Scrabble with them. Once it stops being about expanding your vocabulary and spelling, and starts being about maximizing points with words you only know because they're useful in the game, it becomes a lot less interesting.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

    Not a single one of those examples is an English-language word. They are all loanwords, with the exception of two proper nouns and an example of archaic spelling which hasn't been used in centuries.

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  • [–] [S] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    When does a loanword become native? Single, example, language, exception, proper, use, and century are all words that came from French.

    Not a lone one of those forebisens is an English-tongue word. They are all loanwords, with the outlier of two ownnames and a forebisen of oldspelling which hasn't been noted in yearhundreds.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It becomes a "normal" word when people use it. All these words are essentially not used at all.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    They forgot to add 'qbittorrent'

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