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The letter Q isn't always followed by a U - just look at these words.
- The letter Q is almost always followed by a U in English, but that isn't always the case.
- Scrabble players tend to struggle with words using a Q, but experienced players know they don't need a U to follow it.
- There are a handful of words that English borrowed from other languages that flout that rule, like burqa, qat, and qabbalah.
Some things make perfect pairs.
Macaroni and cheese. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Hall and Oates.
The same can be said for two letters of the English alphabet: Q and U. Anyone who's taken a spelling class probably remembers their teacher telling them that in English, the Q must always be followed by a U.
Well, it turns out that's not exactly true. In reality, there are dozens of words in English that have a Q that isn't followed by a U. And no one knows this better than Scrabble players.
Many of those words are borrowed from other languages. Arabic and Hebrew are two especially common sources, as in English the Q is often used to represent the more guttural "K" sound that appears in those languages. We can thank those languages for giving us words like "burqa," a full-body garment worn by some Muslim women, and "sheqel," the currency of Israel.
But Q-without-U words come all from all over the globe, from Mandarin to Inuit to Zulu. A couple of them are even "homegrown" English words with a modern twist. They're all in the English dictionary, and therefore allowed in Scrabble.
Here's a sample of the English words in which the Q stands alone.