Qoph ( Phoenician Qōp Phoenician_qoph

) is the nineteenth

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 The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...

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 Qōp̄ ܩ and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, 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 ...

. 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 The system of Hebrew numerals is a quasi-decimal alphabetic numeral system using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The system was adapted from that of the Greek numerals in the late 2nd century BCE. The current numeral system is also known as t ...

, it has the numerical value of 100.

Origins

The origin of the glyph shape of ''qōp'' ( Phoenician_qoph

) is uncertain. It is usually suggested to have originally depicted either a sewing needle, specifically the

eye of a needle The term "eye of a needle" is used as a metaphor for a very narrow opening. It occurs several times throughout the Talmud. The New Testament quotes Jesus as saying in Luke 18:25 that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle tha ...

(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

''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 Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

via Biblical Greek) 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

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 and other Mizrahi Jews, Mizrahim, or even as by Yemenite Jews under the influence of Yemeni Arabic. 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

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 Maghrebi script, scripts of the Maghreb it is written with a single dot, similarly to how the letter ''Pe (Semitic letter)#Arabic fāʼ, 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, the letter is pronounced voiced phoneme, voiced (''maǧhūr''), although some scholars argue, that Sibawayh's term ''maǧhūr'' implies lack of Aspiration (linguistics), aspiration rather than voice. As noted above, Modern Standard Arabic has the voiceless uvular plosive as its standard pronunciation of the letter, but dialectical pronunciations vary as follows: The three main pronunciations: *: in most of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic, Southern and Tihamiyya Arabic, Western Yemen and parts of Oman, Northern Iraq, parts of the Levant (especially the Alawite and Druze dialects). In fact, it is so characteristic of the Alawites 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, San'ani Arabic, Northern and Hadhrami Arabic, Eastern Yemen and parts of Oman, Southern Mesopotamian Arabic, 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, Algeria, and Morocco but it is also used partially across those countries in some words. *: in most of the Levant and Lower Egypt, Egypt, as well as some North African towns such as Tlemcen and Fez, Morocco, Fez. Other pronunciations: *: In Sudanese Arabic, Sudanese and some forms of Yemeni Arabic, Yemeni, even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic. *: In rural Palestinian Arabic, Palestinian 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 Arabic, Najdi, though this pronunciation is fading in favor of . *: Optionally in Iraqi Arabic, Iraqi and in Gulf Arabic, it is sometimes pronounced as a voiced postalveolar affricate , even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic. * ~ : in Sudanese Arabic, Sudanese and some Yemeni dialects (Yemeni Arabic, 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 Gimel, Jīm as an affricate , but the Arabian Peninsula, Arabian peninsula 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 Yemeni Arabic, Yemen and parts of Omani Arabic, Oman 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: Maghribi script sura 5

Maghrebi variant

The Maghrebi script, 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 Mashriqi 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

Unicode

References

External links

{{Northwest Semitic abjad Arabic letters Hebrew letters Phoenician alphabet