Chinese fascination with the letter Q

[yonglan]

Just a light-hearted topic, but one that at the same time does sincerely arouse my curiosity.

It seems to me that in both Taiwan and China if an English letter is used for something, the highest percentage of usage is definitely Q.

Your thoughts on why this might be the case are welcome.

[smithsgj]

Well there's Lao She's Ah Q, and then Q means something like "tasty" in Taiwan 國語. That's all I can think of.

[Cyberian]

I still don't know what you 2 are talking about.

Do you mean sentences like:

What Q are you talking about?

What Q is that?

Who Q is that person?

[yonglan]

Thanks, but I'm not really looking for examples, I have plenty of those. That's what lead me to start this thread.

I am wondering if someone has a theory as to why Q and not one of the other 25?

[yonglan]

Ah Q

QQ.com

Qoo

and of course just when I need more examples my mind runs blank

[skylee]

Well there's Lao She's Ah Q

Perhaps you meant Lu Xun's Ah Q?

[39degN]

no, i guess he means We using lot of Q to name some products.

for example, the instant messenger named QQ

a car made by kerry called QQ

or something called "Q版女孩" or whatever.

actually they chosing Q becuase Q means "cute".

just MHO.

[skylee]

"Qoo" is a Coca-cola brand ...

[bhchao]

Like queue? "Q" in the English language will almost always be followed by a "u", like "quintessential" or "quest" or "quill"

[Bob Dylan Thomas]

my suggestion why Q is used: perhaps it's because "Q" is both very easy for Chinese speakers to pronounce (say, compared to letters pronounced with a final consonant sound such as F or X) and yet doesn't resemble like any other sound in Chinese and so reduces confusion (compared to A, B, C, D, E, G, I, K*, O, P, T).

Also, I thought "QQ" in Taiwan meant something along the lines of jelly-like or squishy, when talking about food.

*Before anyone asks, I found a character apparently pronounced "kei" in the 现代汉语词典

[yonglan]

Wow, so many different sorts of responses. Thanks. Keep'em coming.

Q for cute sounds good to me. But there certainly are usages where it would make no sense.

Yes, Qoo is a Coca-cola product (the two flavors tasting quite a lot like Tang and Koolaid, for you US genXers). Anyway, the Chinese name is 酷兒. Aside from 酷 meaning cool, the question is did they come up with the English or the Chinese name first? They seem to push it more as Qoo in Taiwan. Thank god we have Qoo here in China, too. My life would not be the same without it

I honestly started the thread with no opinion. Now I am wondering if Q is just an interesting letter both for its looks in upper case and the fact that is not a common letter. Isn't it the highest point letter in Scrabble?

[smithsgj]

Perhaps you meant Lu Xun's Ah Q?

[Bob Dylan Thomas]

Q is the joint highest-scoring letter in Scrabble with 10 points (equal to Z).

Many scrabble buffs have challenged this, since although both Q and Z only form one 2-letter word each (Qi and Zo), Z has 20-odd 3 letter words whilst Q only has 4 (Qat, Qis and Qua) - and as i'm sure we all know, 2- and 3-letter words are the fundamental building blocks of high-scoring scrabble. So, Q should be worth more, but isn't.

I apologies to all for posting this, but I'm quite keen on Scrabble.

[wix]

Taiwanese attitude towards Q is somewhat curious. The word QQ is often seen. It approximates the pronunciation of a Taiwanese (Hoklo) word that means chewy or something similar at least.

However, Taiwan is at pains to accept the use of Q in pinyin. Taiwan's Tongyong pinyin system uses c instead of q (I think, they keep changing it).

[yonglan]

They seem to be using ci and cy, according to

http://pinyin.info/romanization/compare/hanyu.html

Yale used chy. I loved Yale's romanization. Pinyin is the Microsoft of romanization systems

But Tongyong is a nutty system that no one knows or cares about and seems to be basically a political weapon, no?

I don't think Tongyong figures into the discussion with the average Taiwanese, does it? Of course, sometimes it seems that Taiwan has 23 million romanization systems