Q with hook tail (majuscule: Ɋ, minuscule: ɋ) is a letter of the extended

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

. It was introduced by

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...

missionaries in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

for use in the

Numanggang language Numanggang (Manggang) is a language of Papua New Guinea. Other names are Boana, Kai, Ngain, Sugu. Numanggang is preferred over Tok Pisin Tok Pisin (,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh ; Tok Pisin ), often ...

in the 1930s or 1940s. In 2002, it was decided to discontinue using Q with hook tail.Revised Proposal for Additional Latin Phonetic and Orthographic Characters
, Lorna A. Priest, 2004. It is still used in the

Kâte language Kâte is a Papuan language spoken by about 6,000 people in the Finschhafen District of Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. It is part of the Finisterre–Huon branch of the Trans–New Guinea language family (McElhanon 1975, Ross 2005). It was a ...

to represent a

voiced labial-velar plosive Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...

. (Latin Q is voiceless .) In some forms of handwriting for English (and presumably other languages based on the

), lowercase q ''always'' has a hook tail. This is particularly evident in

geometric sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

typefaces used to teach children how to write.

Unicode

References

Qz {{Latin-script-stub