In certain languages, the final form or terminal form is a special character used to represent a letter only when it occurs at the end of a word. Some languages that use final form characters are:

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic peoples, Tungusic East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized Ethnic minorities in China, ethnic minority in China and the people from wh ...

and one letter in

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

(). The lowercase

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

letter "s" had separate medial ( ſ) and final (s) in the orthographies of many European languages from the medieval period to the early 19th century; it survived in the German

Fraktur Fraktur () is a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand. It is designed such that the beginnings and ends of the individual strokes that make up each letter will be clearly vis ...

script until the 1940s.

Hebrew

In the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...

the final form is called sofit (, meaning "final" or "ending"). This set of letters is known acronymically as ( letters). The now final forms predate their non-final counterparts; They were the default forms used in any position within a word. Their

descender In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a grapheme that extends below the Baseline (typography), baseline of a typeface, font. For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal li ...

eventually bent forwards when preceding another letter to facilitate writing. A final form of these letters is also called ''pshuta'' (, meaning extended or plain). The letter Mem also had a descender , however, its current final form was a variant of used interchangeably in all positions. The standardization is mentioned in the

Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewi ...

(Megillah 2b-3a and Shabbas 104a). One instance of a medial is preserved in Isaiah 9:6 of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew (, or ), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the Standard language, standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only surviving Canaanite language, as well as one of the List of languages by first w ...

uses the forms finally, when transcribing a

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...

pronunciation, for example (microscope), (Mubarak, ), while their final forms , are transcribing a

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

pronunciation, for example (Kach), (Chef).

References

{{reflist Orthography