Qoph

It became over time the letter Q in the Latin alphabet, and the letter Qoppa in certain early varieties of the Greek alphabet.

Origins of Qoph

Others have proposed that it originated from a pictogram of someone's head and neck (Qaf in Arabic meant the nape); qaw is also reconstructed as a proto-Afro-Asiatic word for neck (ḫḫ in Egyptian), and in some dialects of Arabic, qoph is pronounced as a [hamza] ء, a glottal stop in the back of the throat - similar to the part of the throat used to make the sound of the qoph. In hieroglyphs, two determinatives for neck, F10 and F11 Gardiner's sign list#D. Parts of the Human Body (F12 for "nape"), are both vertical lines topped with heads with horns. F10 is a line underneath an ox head (and a cross toward the bottom of the line), which could conceivably have evolved into the Arabic aleph with a hamza on top (the pronounced (and sometimes written) Egyptian Arabic way of saying qaf). The Arabic hamza far more closely resembles the earlier iterations of Aleph Aleph than does the aleph character itself, which is just a vertical line on top of which the hamza can sit Aleph#Arabic Alif.

Hebrew Kuf

Hebrew spelling:

Hebrew Pronunciation

Significance of Kuf

Kuf is used in an Israeli phrase: after a child will say something false, one might say "B'Shin Qoph, Resh" (With Shin, Qoph, Resh). These letters spell Sheqer, which is the Hebrew word for a lie. It would be akin to an English speaker saying "That's an L-I-E."

Arabic qāf

As noted above, Modern Standard Arabic has the voiceless uvular plosive as its standard pronunciation of the letter, but dialectical pronunciations vary as follows: In Egyptian Arabic, as well as Levantine Arabic and forms of Moroccan Arabic from around Fes, the letter is often pronounced as the hamza or glottal stop but is approximated to or preserved in several Modern Standard Arabic loanwords. In Sa'idi (the Arabic of the Sa'id, Southern or Upper Egypt), in some rural areas of Jordan, in much if not most of the Maghreb and some forms of Yemeni Arabic, it is frequently pronounced as the voiced velar plosive . In Sudanese Arabic and some forms of Yemeni Arabic, it is pronounced as the voiced uvular plosive . In rural Palestinian Arabic it is often pronounced as the voiceless velar plosive . In the United Arab Emirates and Gulf Arabic in general, it is often pronounced as the voiced postalveolar affricate . In some variants of Moroccan Arabic, it retains its MSA pronunciation .

This variance has led to the confusion over the spelling of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi's name in Latin letters. In Western Arabic dialects the sound is more preserved but can also be sometimes pronounced or as a simple under Berber and French influence.

The Maghrebi style of writing qaf is different. Once the prevalent style, it is now only used in Maghribi countries for writing Qur'an with the exception of Libya which adopted the Mashriqi form. There is no possibility of confusing it with the letter fa' as fa' is written with a dot underneath () in the Maghribi script.

References

Category:Phoenician alphabet Category:Arabic letters Category:Hebrew alphabet