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Qoph
Qoph ( Phoenician Qōp ) is the nineteenth letter of the Semitic scripts. Aramaic Qop is derived from the Phoenician letter, and derivations from Aramaic include Hebrew Qof , Syriac Qōp̄ ܩ and Arabic . Its original sound value was a West Semitic 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, 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"). 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qoph
Qoph ( Phoenician Qōp ) is the nineteenth letter of the Semitic scripts. Aramaic Qop is derived from the Phoenician letter, and derivations from Aramaic include Hebrew Qof , Syriac Qōp̄ ܩ and Arabic . Its original sound value was a West Semitic 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, 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"). 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syriac Alphabet
The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century AD. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares similarities with the Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic and Sogdian, the precursor and a direct ancestor of the traditional Mongolian scripts. Syriac is written from right to left in horizontal lines. It is a cursive script where most—but not all—letters connect within a word. There is no letter case distinction between upper and lower case letters, though some letters change their form depending on their position within a word. Spaces separate individual words. All 22 letters are consonants, although there are optional diacritic marks to indicate vowels and other features. In addition to the sounds of the language, the letters of the Syriac alphabet can be used to represent numbers in a system similar to Hebrew and Greek numerals. Apart from Classical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician alphabet is also called the Early Linear script (in a Semitic languages, Semitic context, not connected to Minoan writing systems), because it is an early development of the Proto-Sinaitic script, Proto- or Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic Writing system, script, into a Writing system#Graphic classification, linear, purely alphabetic script, also marking the transfer from a multi-directional writing system, where a variety of writing directions occurred, to a regulated horizontal, right-to-left script. Its immediate predecessor, the Proto-Canaanite, Old Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic script, used in the final stages of the Late Bronze Age, first in either Egypt or Canaan and then in the Syro-Hittite states, Syro-Hittite kingdoms, is the oldest fully ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kaph
Kaph (also spelled kaf) is the eleventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician kāp , Hebrew kāf , Aramaic kāp , Syriac kāp̄ , and Arabic kāf (in abjadi order). The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek kappa (Κ), Latin K, and Cyrillic К. Origin of kaph Kaph is thought to be derived from a pictogram of a hand (in both modern Arabic and modern Hebrew, kaph כף means "palm" or "grip"), though in Arabic the ''a'' in the name of the letter (كاف) is pronounced longer than the ''a'' in the word meaning "palm" (كَف). D46 Hebrew kaf Hebrew spelling: Hebrew pronunciation The letter kaf is one of the six letters that can receive a dagesh kal. The other five are bet, gimel, daleth, pe, and tav (see Hebrew alphabet for more about these letters). There are two orthographic variants of this letter that alter the pronunciation: Kaf with the dagesh When the kaph has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, it represents a voiceless velar plosive ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hebrew Alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet ( he, wikt:אלפבית, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic languages, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic, especially among Druze in Israel, Druze. It is an offshoot of the Aramaic alphabet, Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet. Historically, two separate abjad scripts have been used to write Hebrew. The original, old Hebrew script, known as the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, has been largely preserved in a variant form as the Samaritan alphabet. The present "Jewish script" or "square script", on the contrary, is a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet and was technicall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaic Greek Alphabets
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi () was used only in a sub-group of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon () for the vowel . The local, so-called ''epichoric'', alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols , and ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters ( and ), in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function (); in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters ( = , = , = ); and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was originally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semitic Scripts
Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet. According to common theory, Canaanites or Hyksos who spoke a Semitic language repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The script is attested in a small corpus of inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, dating to the Middle Bronze Age (2100–1500 BC). The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) and the mid-16th (late date) century BC. However, the discovery of the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions near the Nile River indicates that the script originated in Egypt. The evolution of Proto-Sinaitic and the various Proto-Canaanite scripts during ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aramaic Alphabet
The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects underwent linguistic Aramaization during a language shift for governing purposes —a precursor to Arabization centuries later— including among Assyrians who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script, and among Jews (but not Samaritans), who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew, displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. (The modern Hebrew alphabet derives from the Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern Samaritan alphabet, which derives from Paleo-Hebrew). The letters in the Aramaic alphabet all re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 Arabic-speaking world. Yemeni Arabic can be divided roughly into several main dialect groups, each with its own distinctive vocabulary and phonology. The most important four groups are San'ani in the North and Center and Hadhrami in the East, where is pronounced and is or (except in coastal Hadhrami where is ), in addition to Ta'izzi-Adeni in the South and Tihami in the West, where is and is . Yemeni Arabic is used for daily communications and has no official status; Modern Standard Arabic is used in official purposes, education, commerce and media. Non-Arabic South Semitic languages indigenous to the region include several Modern South Arabian languages, such as the Mehri and Soqotri languages, which are not Arabic langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yemenite Jews
Yemenite Jews or Yemeni Jews or Teimanim (from ''Yehudei Teman''; ar, اليهود اليمنيون) are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the overwhelming majority of Yemen's Jewish population immigrated to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. After several waves of persecution throughout Yemen, the vast majority of Yemenite Jews now live in Israel, while smaller communities live in the United States and elsewhere. Only a handful remain in Yemen. The few remaining Jews experience intense, and at times violent, anti-Semitism on a daily basis. Yemenite Jews have a unique religious tradition that distinguishes them from Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, and other Jewish groups. They have been described as "the most Jewish of all Jews" and "the ones who have preserved the Hebrew language the best". Yemenite Jews fall within the "Mizrahi" (eastern) category of Jews, though they differ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mizrahi Jews
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 in the Land of Israel and those who existed in diaspora throughout and around the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from biblical times into the modern era. In current usage, the term ''Mizrahi'' is almost exclusively applied to descendants of Jewish communities from Western Asia and North Africa; in this classification are the descendants of Mashriqi Jews who had lived in Middle Eastern countries, such as Iraqi Jews, Kurdish Jews, Lebanese Jews, Syrian Jews, Egyptian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Turkish Jews, and Iranian Jews; as well as the descendants of Maghrebi Jews who had lived in North African countries, such as Libyan Jews, Tunisian Jews, Algerian Jews, and Moroccan Jews. These various Jewish communities were first officially grouped ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 most historically significant Jewish communities. The Jewish community of what is termed in Jewish sources "Babylon" or "Babylonia" included Ezra the scribe, whose return to Judea in the late 6th century BCE is associated with significant changes in Jewish ritual observance and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled in "Babylonia", identified with modern Iraq. From the biblical Babylonian period to the rise of the Islamic caliphate, the Jewish community of "Babylon" thrived as the center of Jewish learning. The Mongol invasion and Islamic discrimination in the Middle Ages led to its decline. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Jews of Iraq fared better. The community established modern schools in the second ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
