Of course, as I wrote.
I hear the qu as equivalent to kw-- not a vowel at all.
That's certainly one way to hear it. I think another is as a long U sound; I've driven myself silly trying not to produce a long U sound when I say "quiet", and can't. I'm sure there are plenty of others I could easily come up with ("ai" comes to mind from long-ago days as a Scrabble player), but these things seem to be arguable by nature. And I'm sure a linguist would pop out of the woodwork to announce that "ai" is a diphthong.
