Wikipedia:Today's featured list/April 9, 2012

Qwerty, one of the few native English words with q and no u in current usage, is derived from the first six letters of a standard keyboard layout.

There are some exceptions to the rule in the English language that the letter Q is followed by the letter U. The majority of these exceptions are anglicised from Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Inuktitut, or other languages which do not use the English alphabet, with Q representing a sound not found in English. For example, in the Chinese pinyin alphabet, qi is pronounced /tʃi/ by an English speaker, as pinyin uses ‹q› to represent the sound [tɕʰ], which is approximated as [tʃ] 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. QWERTY, one of the few native English words with Q and no U in current usage, is derived from the first six letters of a standard keyboard layout (pictured). (Full list...)