letter
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
of the Semitic scripts. Aramaic Qop is derived from the Phoenician letter, and derivations from Aramaic include
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
Qof ,
Syriac Syriac may refer to:
*Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic
*Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region
* Syriac alphabet
** Syriac (Unicode block)
** Syriac Supplement
* Neo-Aramaic languages ...
Qōp̄ ܩ and
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
.
Its original sound value was a
West Semitic
The West Semitic languages are a proposed major sub-grouping of ancient Semitic languages. The term was first coined in 1883 by Fritz Hommel.emphatic stop, presumably . In Hebrew numerals, it has the numerical value of 100.
Origins
The origin of the glyph shape of ''qōp'' () is uncertain. It is usually suggested to have originally depicted either a
sewing needle
A sewing needle, used for hand-sewing, is a long slender tool with a pointed tip at one end and a hole (or ''eye'') to hold the sewing thread. The earliest needles were made of bone or wood; modern needles are manufactured from high carbon steel ...
, specifically the eye of a needle (Hebrew and Aramaic both refer to the eye of a needle), or the back of a head and neck (''qāf'' in Arabic meant "
nape
The nape is the back of the neck. In technical anatomical/medical terminology, the nape is also called the nucha (from the Medieval Latin rendering of the Arabic , "spinal marrow"). The corresponding adjective is ''nuchal'', as in the term ''nu ...
").
According to an older suggestion, it may also have been a picture of a monkey and its tail (the Hebrew means "monkey").
Besides Aramaic ''Qop'', which gave rise to the letter in the Semitic abjads used in classical antiquity,
Phoenician ''qōp'' is also the origin of the Latin letter Q and Greek Ϙ (''qoppa'') and Φ (''phi'').
Hebrew Qof
The ''Oxford Hebrew-English Dictionary'' transliterates the letter Qoph () as ' or '; and, when word-final, it may be transliterated as '.
The English spellings of Biblical names (as derived from Latin via
Biblical Greek
Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
) containing this letter may represent it as ''c'' or ''k'', e.g. ''Cain'' for Hebrew ''Qayin'', or ''Kenan'' for ''Qena'an'' (Genesis 4:1, 5:9).
Pronunciation
In
modern Israeli Hebrew
Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
the letter is also called '. The letter represents ; i.e., no distinction is made between Qof and Kaph (in modern Hebrew).
However, many historical groups have made that distinction, with Qof being pronounced by
Iraqi Jews
The history of the Jews in Iraq ( he, יְהוּדִים בָּבְלִים, ', ; ar, اليهود العراقيون, ) is documented from the time of the Babylonian captivity c. 586 BC. Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and mos ...
and other
Mizrahim
Mizrahi Jews ( he, יהודי המִזְרָח), also known as ''Mizrahim'' () or ''Mizrachi'' () and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or ''Edot HaMizrach'' (, ), are a grouping of Jewish communities comprising those who remained ...
, or even as by Yemenite Jews under the influence of
Yemeni Arabic
Yemeni Arabic is a cluster of varieties of Arabic spoken in Yemen, southwestern Saudi Arabia and the Horn of Africa. It is generally considered a very conservative dialect cluster, having many classical features not found across most of the A ...
.
Qoph is consistently transliterated into classical Greek with the unaspirated〈κ〉/k/, while Kaph (both its allophones) is transliterated with the aspirated〈χ〉/kʰ/. Thus Qoph was unaspirated /k/ where Kaph was /kʰ/, this distinction is no longer present. Further we know that Qoph is one of the emphatic consonants through comparison with other Semitic languages, and most likely was ejective /kʼ/. In Arabic the emphatics are pharyngealised and this causes a preference for back vowels, this is not shown in Hebrew orthography. Though the gutturals show a preference for certain vowels, Hebrew emphatics do not in Tiberian Hebrew (the Hebrew dialect recorded with vowels) and therefore were most likely not pharyngealised, but ejective, pharyngealisation being a result of Arabisation.
Numeral
Qof in Hebrew numerals represents the number 100. Sarah is described in Genesis Rabba as , literally "At Qof years of age, she was like Kaph years of age in sin", meaning that when she was 100 years old, she was as sinless as when she was 20.
Arabic Qāf
The Arabic letter is named '. It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:
Traditionally in the scripts of the Maghreb it is written with a single dot, similarly to how the letter '' fā'' ف is written in Mashreqi scripts:
It is usually transliterated into Latin script as ''q'', though some scholarly works use ''ḳ''.
Pronunciation
According to Sibawayh, author of the first book on
Arabic grammar
Arabic grammar or Arabic language sciences ( ar, النحو العربي ' or ar, عُلُوم اللغَة العَرَبِيَّة ') is the grammar of the Arabic language. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities wit ...
, the letter is pronounced voiced (''maǧhūr''), although some scholars argue, that Sibawayh's term ''maǧhūr'' implies lack of aspiration rather than voice. As noted above, Modern Standard Arabic has the
voiceless uvular plosive
The voiceless uvular plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is pronounced like a voiceless velar plosive , except that the tongue makes contact not on the soft palate but on the uvula. The symbol in the ...
as its standard pronunciation of the letter, but dialectical pronunciations vary as follows:
The three main pronunciations:
*: in most of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco,
Southern
Southern may refer to:
Businesses
* China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China
* Southern Airways, defunct US airline
* Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US
* Southern Airways Express, M ...
and
Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
Yemen and parts of Oman, Northern Iraq, parts of the Levant (especially the
Alawite
The Alawis, Alawites ( ar, علوية ''Alawīyah''), or pejoratively Nusayris ( ar, نصيرية ''Nuṣayrīyah'') are an ethnoreligious group that lives primarily in Levant and follows Alawism, a sect of Islam that originated from Shia Isla ...
and Druze dialects). In fact, it is so characteristic of the
Alawite
The Alawis, Alawites ( ar, علوية ''Alawīyah''), or pejoratively Nusayris ( ar, نصيرية ''Nuṣayrīyah'') are an ethnoreligious group that lives primarily in Levant and follows Alawism, a sect of Islam that originated from Shia Isla ...
s and the Druze that Levantines invented a verb "yqaqi" /jqæqi/ that means "speaking with a /q/". However, most other dialects of Arabic will use this pronunciation in learned words that are borrowed from Standard Arabic into the respective dialect or when Arabs speak Modern Standard Arabic.
*: in most of the
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
,
Northern
Northern may refer to the following:
Geography
* North, a point in direction
* Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe
* Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States
* Northern Province, Sri Lanka
* Northern Range, a r ...
and
Eastern
Eastern may refer to:
Transportation
*China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai
* Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways
*Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 1926 to 1991
* Eastern Air ...
Yemen and parts of Oman, Southern Iraq, some parts within Jordan, eastern Syria and southern Palestine, Upper Egypt (''Ṣaʿīd''), Sudan, Libya, Mauritania and to lesser extent in some parts of Tunisia,
, and Morocco but it is also used partially across those countries in some words.
*: in most of the Levant and Egypt, as well as some North African towns such as Tlemcen and
Fez
Fez most often refers to:
* Fez (hat), a type of felt hat commonly worn in the Ottoman Empire
* Fez, Morocco (or Fes), the second largest city of Morocco
Fez or FEZ may also refer to:
Media
* ''Fez'' (Frank Stella), a 1964 painting by the moder ...
.
Other pronunciations:
*: In Sudanese and some forms of
Yemeni
Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast and sha ...
, even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
*: In rural
Palestinian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
it is often pronounced as a voiceless velar plosive , even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
Marginal pronunciations:
*: In some positions in
Najdi Najdi may refer to:
*People of Najd
* Najdi (surname)
*Najdi Arabic, a variety of the Arabic language,
* Najdi (sheep), a breed of sheep
*Najdi!
Najdi! ( mk, Најди!, meaning "Find!") is a search engine specialized in Republic of Macedonia me ...
, though this pronunciation is fading in favor of .
*: Optionally in Iraqi and in Gulf Arabic, it is sometimes pronounced as a
voiced postalveolar affricate
The voiced palato-alveolar sibilant affricate, voiced post-alveolar affricate or voiced domed postalveolar sibilant affricate, is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic ...
, even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
* ~ : in Sudanese and some Yemeni dialects ( Yafi'i), and sometimes in Gulf Arabic by Persian influence, even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
Velar Gāf
It is not well known when the pronunciation of Qāf as a velar occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Jīm as an affricate , but the
Arabian peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
which is the homeland of the Arabic language, there are two sets of pronunciations, either the represents a and represents a which is the main pronunciation in most of the peninsula except for western and southern Yemen and parts of
Oman
Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of t ...
where represents a and represents a .
The Standard Arabic (MSA) combination of as a and as a does not occur in any natural modern dialect in the Arabian peninsula, which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of to and the pronunciation of the as a as shown in the table below:
Maghrebi variant
The Maghrebi style of writing ' is different: having only a single point (dot) above; when the letter is isolated or word-final, it may sometimes become unpointed.
The earliest Arabic manuscripts show ' in several variants: pointed (above or below) or unpointed. Then the prevalent convention was having a point above for ' and a point below for '; this practice is now only preserved in manuscripts from the Maghribi, with the exception of Libya and Algeria, where the
Mashriq
The Mashriq ( ar, ٱلْمَشْرِق), sometimes spelled Mashreq or Mashrek, is a term used by Arabs to refer to the eastern part of the Arab world, located in Western Asia and eastern North Africa. Poetically the "Place of Sunrise", the n ...
i form (two dots above: ) prevails.
Within Maghribi texts, there is no possibility of confusing it with the letter ', as it is instead written with a dot underneath () in the Maghribi script.Muhammad Ghoniem, M S M Saifullah, cAbd ar-Rahmân Robert Squires & cAbdus Samad Are There Scribal Errors In The Qur'ân? see ' on a traffic sign written which is written elsewhere as , Retrieved 2011-August-27