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- Published: 01 Feb 2010
- Uploaded: 19 Aug 2011
- Author: AymanElbahar
The original sound value is a voiceless bilabial plosive: ; it retains this value in most Semitic languages except for Arabic, which having lost now uses it to render a voiceless labiodental fricative .
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Pi (Π), Latin P, and Cyrillic Pe.
{|class=wikitable style="text-align:center;" |+Orthographic variants !rowspan=2|position in word !colspan=3|Various Print Fonts !rowspan=2|Cursive Hebrew !rowspan=2|RashiScript |- !Serif!! Sans-serif !! Monospaced |- |non final |פ |פ |פ | | |- |final |ף |ף |ף | | |}
There are two orthographic variants of this letter which indicate a different pronunciation:
When a word in modern Hebrew borrowed from another language ends in /p/, a pe with a dagesh at the end of the word is used instead of the final form, as a word almost never ends with a letter containing a Dagesh, except for very few biblical exceptions. A Pe sofit is virtually non-existent in Hebrew, .
Normally, the letter fāʼ renders sound, but may also be used some names and loanwords where it can render , might be arabized as in accordance to its spelling.[as in يونيلفر (Unilever)]. It may be used interchangeably with the modified letter - ve (with 3 dots) in this case.
In the process of developing from Proto-Semitic, Proto-Semitic became Arabic , and this is reflected in the use of the letter representing in other Semitic languages for in Arabic.
Examples on usage in Modern Standard Arabic:
(فَـ ) is a multi-function prefix most commonly equivalent to "so" or "so that." For example: نكتب ("we write") → فنكتب ("so we write").
The Maghribi style of writing fa' is different. It is written with a dot underneath like this (). 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. See also qaf for the Maghribi style of writing that letter.
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