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 קוף and Aramaic קופא both refer to the eye of a needle), or the back of a head and neck (qāf in Arabic meant "nape").[1] According to an older suggestion, it may also have been a picture of a monkey and its tail (the Hebrew קוף means "monkey").[2]
Besides AramaicQop, 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).[3]
Hebrew Qof
The Oxford Hebrew-English Dictionary transliterates the letter Qoph (קוֹף) as q or k; and, when word-final, it may be transliterated as ck.[citation needed] The English spellings of Biblical names (as derived from Latin 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).
In modern Israeli Hebrew the letter is also calledkuf. The letter represents /k/; i.e., no distinction is made between the pronunciations of Qof and Kaph (in modern Hebrew).
However, many historical groups have made that distinction, with Qof being pronounced [q] by Iraqi Jews and other Mizrahim, or even as [ɡ] 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.[citation needed]
Numeral
Qof in Hebrew numerals represents the number 100. Sarah is described in Genesis Rabba as בת ק' כבת כ' שנה לחטא, 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.[4]
Arabic Qāf
The main pronunciations of written ⟨ق⟩ in Arabic dialects.
The Arabic letter ق is named قافqāf. It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:
It is usually transliterated into Latin script as q, though some scholarly works use ḳ.[6]
Pronunciation
According to Sibawayh, author of the first book on Arabic grammar, the letter is pronounced voiced (maǧhūr),[7] although some scholars argue, that Sibawayh's term maǧhūr implies lack of aspiration rather than voice.[8] As noted above, Modern Standard Arabic has the voiceless uvular plosive/q/ as its standard pronunciation of the letter, but dialectical pronunciations vary as follows:
The three main pronunciations:
[q]: in most of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, Southern and 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/".[9] 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.
[ʔ]: in most of the Levant and Egypt, as well as some North African towns such as Tlemcen and Fez.
Other pronunciations:
[ɢ]: In Sudanese and some forms of Yemeni, even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
[k]: In rural Palestinian it is often pronounced as a voiceless velar plosive[k], even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
Marginal pronunciations:
[d͡z]: In some positions in Najdi, though this pronunciation is fading in favor of [ɡ].[11][12]
[ɣ] ~ [ʁ]: 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 ⟨ق⟩ as a velar [ɡ] occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Jīm ⟨ج⟩ as an affricate [d͡ʒ], but the Arabian peninsula which is the homeland of the Arabic language, there are two sets of pronunciations, either the ⟨ج⟩ represents a [d͡ʒ] and ⟨ق⟩ represents a [ɡ] which is the main pronunciation in most of the peninsula except for western and southern Yemen and parts of Oman where ⟨ج⟩ represents a [ɡ] and ⟨ق⟩ represents a [q].
The Standard Arabic (MSA) combination of ⟨ج⟩ as a [d͡ʒ] and ⟨ق⟩ as a [q] does not occur in any natural modern dialect in the Arabian peninsula, which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of ⟨ج⟩ to [d͡ʒ] and the pronunciation of the ⟨ق⟩ as a [ɡ] as shown in the table below:
Western and southern Yemen: Taʽizzi-Adeni and Tihamiyya dialects (coastal Yemen), in addition to southwestern (Salalah region) and eastern Oman, including Muscat, the capital.
Actually, the [d͡ʒ] variant is the preferred pronunciation when taught outside of Arabic speaking countries where the local variant of ج is accepted as the standard, namely [d͡ʒ], [ʒ], [ɟ], or [ɡ].
In Sanaa, [ɡ] is used as the literary standard for ق, whereas the literary standard pronunciation in Sudan is [ɢ] or [ɡ].
The Maghribi text renders qāf and fāʼ differently than elsewhere would
Maghrebi variant
Not to be confused with ف, a letter with the same initial and medial forms in other languages.
The Maghrebi style of writing qāf is different: having only a single point (dot) above; when the letter is isolated or word-final, it may sometimes become unpointed.[13]
The Maghrebi qāf
Position in word:
Isolated
Final
Medial
Initial
Form of letter:
ڧ ࢼ
ـڧ ـࢼ
ـڧـ
ڧـ
The earliest Arabic manuscripts show qāf in several variants: pointed (above or below) or unpointed.[14] Then the prevalent convention was having a point above for qāf and a point below for fāʼ; this practice is now only preserved in manuscripts from the Maghribi,[15] with the exception of Libya and Algeria, where the Mashriqi form (two dots above: ق) prevails.
Within Maghribi texts, there is no possibility of confusing it with the letter fāʼ, as it is instead written with a dot underneath (ڢ) in the Maghribi script.[16]
^ Travers Wood, Henry Craven Ord Lanchester, A Hebrew Grammar, 1913, p. 7. A. B. Davidson, Hebrew Primer and Grammar, 2000, p. 4. The meaning is doubtful. "Eye of a needle" has been suggested, and also "knot" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology vol. 45.
^ Isaac Taylor, History of the Alphabet: Semitic Alphabets, Part 1, 2003: "The old explanation, which has again been revived by Halévy, is that it denotes an 'ape,' the character Q being taken to represent an ape with its tail hanging down. It may also be referred to a Talmudic root which would signify an 'aperture' of some kind, as the 'eye of a needle,' ... Lenormant adopts the more usual explanation that the word means a 'knot'.
^ Qop may have been assigned the sound value /kʷʰ/ in early Greek; as this was allophonic with /pʰ/ in certain contexts and certain dialects, the letter qoppa continued as the letter phi. C. Brixhe, "History of the Alpbabet", in Christidēs, Arapopoulou, & Chritē, eds., 2007, A History of Ancient Greek.
^Rabbi Ari Kahn (20 October 2013). "A deeper look at the life of Sarah". aish.com. Retrieved May 9, 2020.
^al-Banduri, Muhammad (2018-11-16). "الخطاط المغربي عبد العزيز مجيب بين التقييد الخطي والترنح الحروفي" [Moroccan calligrapher Abd al-Aziz Mujib: between calligraphic restriction and alphabetic staggering]. Al-Quds (in Arabic). Retrieved 2019-12-17.
^Al-Jallad, Ahmad (2020). A Manual of the Historical Grammar of Arabic (Draft). p. 47.
^Samy Swayd (10 March 2015). Historical Dictionary of the Druzes (2 ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 50. ISBN978-1-4422-4617-1.
^This variance has led to the confusion over the spelling of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi's name in Latin letters. In Western Arabic dialects the sound [q] is more preserved but can also be sometimes pronounced [ɡ] or as a simple [k] under Berber and French influence.
^Bruce Ingham (1 January 1994). Najdi Arabic: Central Arabian. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 14. ISBN90-272-3801-4.
^van den Boogert, N. (1989). "Some notes on Maghrebi script" (PDF). Manuscript of the Middle East. 4. p. 38 shows qāf with a superscript point in all four positions.
^Gacek, Adam (2008). The Arabic Manuscript Tradition. Brill. p. 61. ISBN978-90-04-16540-3.
^Gacek, Adam (2009). Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers. Brill. p. 145. ISBN978-90-04-17036-0.
^Muhammad Ghoniem, M S M Saifullah, cAbd ar-Rahmân Robert Squires & cAbdus Samad, Are There Scribal Errors In The Qur'ân?, see qif on a traffic sign written ڧڢ which is written elsewhere as قف, Retrieved 2011-August-27
External links
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January 29, 2023
qoph, this, article, about, semitic, letter, band, band, redirects, here, other, uses, disambiguation, phoenician, qōp, nineteenth, letter, semitic, scripts, aramaic, derived, from, phoenician, letter, derivations, from, aramaic, include, hebrew, syriac, qōp, . This article is about the Semitic letter For the band see Qoph band Kuf redirects here For other uses see KUF disambiguation 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 ק Syriac Qōp ܩ and Arabic Qaf ق Tsade Qoph Resh PhoenicianHebrewק AramaicSyriacܩArabicقPhonemic representationq g ʔ kPosition in alphabet19Numerical value100Alphabetic derivatives of the PhoenicianGreekϘ Ϟ FLatinQCyrillicҀ FThis article contains special characters Without proper rendering support you may see question marks boxes or other symbols Its original sound value was a West Semitic emphatic stop presumably kʼ In Hebrew numerals it has the numerical value of 100 Contents 1 Origins 2 Hebrew Qof 2 1 Pronunciation 2 2 Numeral 3 Arabic Qaf 3 1 Pronunciation 3 2 Velar Gaf 3 3 Maghrebi variant 4 Unicode 5 References 6 External linksOrigins Edit Eye of a needle 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 קוף and Aramaic קופא both refer to the eye of a needle or the back of a head and neck qaf in Arabic meant nape 1 According to an older suggestion it may also have been a picture of a monkey and its tail the Hebrew קוף means monkey 2 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 F phi 3 Hebrew Qof EditThe Oxford Hebrew English Dictionary transliterates the letter Qoph קו ף as q or k and when word final it may be transliterated as ck citation needed The English spellings of Biblical names as derived from Latin 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 Orthographic variantsVarious print fonts CursiveHebrew RashiscriptSerif Sans serif Monospacedק ק ק Pronunciation Edit In modern Israeli Hebrew the letter is also called kuf The letter represents k i e no distinction is made between the pronunciations of Qof and Kaph in modern Hebrew However many historical groups have made that distinction with Qof being pronounced q by Iraqi Jews and other Mizrahim or even as ɡ by Yemenite Jews under the influence of Yemeni Arabic Qoph is consistently transliterated into classical Greek with the unaspirated k k while Kaph both its allophones is transliterated with the aspirated x 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 citation needed Numeral Edit Qof in Hebrew numerals represents the number 100 Sarah is described in Genesis Rabba as בת ק כבת כ שנה לחטא 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 4 Arabic Qaf Edit The main pronunciations of written ق in Arabic dialects The Arabic letter ق is named قاف qaf It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word Position in word Isolated Final Medial InitialGlyph form Help ق ـق ـقـ قـ Traditionally in the scripts of the Maghreb it is written with a single dot similarly to how the letter fa ف is written in Mashreqi scripts 5 Position in word Isolated Final Medial InitialGlyph form Help ڧ ـڧ ـڧـ ڧـ It is usually transliterated into Latin script as q though some scholarly works use ḳ 6 Pronunciation Edit According to Sibawayh author of the first book on Arabic grammar the letter is pronounced voiced maǧhur 7 although some scholars argue that Sibawayh s term maǧhur implies lack of aspiration rather than voice 8 As noted above Modern Standard Arabic has the voiceless uvular plosive q as its standard pronunciation of the letter but dialectical pronunciations vary as follows The three main pronunciations q in most of Tunisia Algeria and Morocco Southern and 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 jqaeqi that means speaking with a q 9 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 ɡ in most of the Arabian Peninsula Northern and Eastern Yemen and parts of Oman Southern Iraq some parts within Jordan eastern Syria and southern Palestine Upper Egypt Ṣaʿid 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 10 ʔ in most of the Levant and Egypt as well as some North African towns such as Tlemcen and Fez Other pronunciations ɢ In Sudanese and some forms of Yemeni even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic k In rural Palestinian it is often pronounced as a voiceless velar plosive k even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic Marginal pronunciations d z In some positions in Najdi though this pronunciation is fading in favor of ɡ 11 12 d ʒ Optionally in Iraqi and in Gulf Arabic it is sometimes pronounced as a voiced postalveolar affricate d ʒ even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic ɣ ʁ 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 Gaf Edit It is not well known when the pronunciation of Qaf ق as a velar ɡ occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Jim ج as an affricate d ʒ but the Arabian peninsula which is the homeland of the Arabic language there are two sets of pronunciations either the ج represents a d ʒ and ق represents a ɡ which is the main pronunciation in most of the peninsula except for western and southern Yemen and parts of Oman where ج represents a ɡ and ق represents a q The Standard Arabic MSA combination of ج as a d ʒ and ق as a q does not occur in any natural modern dialect in the Arabian peninsula which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of ج to d ʒ and the pronunciation of the ق as a ɡ as shown in the table below Language Dialects Pronunciation of the lettersج قProto Semitic g kʼ Parts of Southern Arabia1 g q Most of the Arabian Peninsula d ʒ 2 g Modern Standard Arabic d ʒ 3 q 4Notes Western and southern Yemen Taʽizzi Adeni and Tihamiyya dialects coastal Yemen in addition to southwestern Salalah region and eastern Oman including Muscat the capital ʒ is an allophone in eastern Arabia Actually the d ʒ variant is the preferred pronunciation when taught outside of Arabic speaking countries where the local variant of ج is accepted as the standard namely d ʒ ʒ ɟ or ɡ In Sanaa ɡ is used as the literary standard for ق whereas the literary standard pronunciation in Sudan is ɢ or ɡ The Maghribi text renders qaf and faʼ differently than elsewhere would Maghrebi variant Edit Not to be confused with ف a letter with the same initial and medial forms in other languages The Maghrebi style of writing qaf is different having only a single point dot above when the letter is isolated or word final it may sometimes become unpointed 13 The Maghrebi qaf Position in word Isolated Final Medial InitialForm of letter ڧ ࢼ ـڧ ـࢼ ـڧـ ڧـ The earliest Arabic manuscripts show qaf in several variants pointed above or below or unpointed 14 Then the prevalent convention was having a point above for qaf and a point below for faʼ this practice is now only preserved in manuscripts from the Maghribi 15 with the exception of Libya and Algeria where the Mashriqi form two dots above ق prevails Within Maghribi texts there is no possibility of confusing it with the letter faʼ as it is instead written with a dot underneath ڢ in the Maghribi script 16 Unicode EditCharacter information Preview ק ق ڧ ࢼ ܩ ࠒUnicode name HEBREW LETTER QOF ARABIC LETTER QAF ARABIC LETTER QAF WITH DOT ABOVE ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN QAF SYRIAC LETTER QAPH SAMARITAN LETTER QUFEncodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hex dec hex dec hexUnicode 1511 U 05E7 1602 U 0642 1703 U 06A7 2236 U 08BC 1833 U 0729 2066 U 0812UTF 8 215 167 D7 A7 217 130 D9 82 218 167 DA A7 224 162 188 E0 A2 BC 220 169 DC A9 224 160 146 E0 A0 92Numeric character reference amp 1511 wbr amp x5E7 wbr amp 1602 wbr amp x642 wbr amp 1703 wbr amp x6A7 wbr amp 2236 wbr amp x8BC wbr amp 1833 wbr amp x729 wbr amp 2066 wbr amp x812 wbr Character information Preview 𐎖 𐡒 𐤒Unicode name UGARITIC LETTER QOPA IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER QOPH PHOENICIAN LETTER QOFEncodings decimal hex dec hex dec hexUnicode 66454 U 10396 67666 U 10852 67858 U 10912UTF 8 240 144 142 150 F0 90 8E 96 240 144 161 146 F0 90 A1 92 240 144 164 146 F0 90 A4 92UTF 16 55296 57238 D800 DF96 55298 56402 D802 DC52 55298 56594 D802 DD12Numeric character reference amp 66454 wbr amp x10396 wbr amp 67666 wbr amp x10852 wbr amp 67858 wbr amp x10912 wbr References Edit Travers Wood Henry Craven Ord Lanchester A Hebrew Grammar 1913 p 7 A B Davidson Hebrew Primer and Grammar 2000 p 4 The meaning is doubtful Eye of a needle has been suggested and also knot Harvard Studies in Classical Philology vol 45 Isaac Taylor History of the Alphabet Semitic Alphabets Part 1 2003 The old explanation which has again been revived by Halevy is that it denotes an ape the character Q being taken to represent an ape with its tail hanging down It may also be referred to a Talmudic root which would signify an aperture of some kind as the eye of a needle Lenormant adopts the more usual explanation that the word means a knot Qop may have been assigned the sound value kʷʰ in early Greek as this was allophonic with pʰ in certain contexts and certain dialects the letter qoppa continued as the letter phi C Brixhe History of the Alpbabet in Christides Arapopoulou amp Chrite eds 2007 A History of Ancient Greek Rabbi Ari Kahn 20 October 2013 A deeper look at the life of Sarah aish com Retrieved May 9 2020 al Banduri Muhammad 2018 11 16 الخطاط المغربي عبد العزيز مجيب بين التقييد الخطي والترنح الحروفي Moroccan calligrapher Abd al Aziz Mujib between calligraphic restriction and alphabetic staggering Al Quds in Arabic Retrieved 2019 12 17 e g The Encyclopaedia of Islam Second Edition Kees Versteegh The Arabic Language pg 131 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 2001 Paperback edition ISBN 9780748614363 Al Jallad Ahmad 2020 A Manual of the Historical Grammar of Arabic Draft p 47 Samy Swayd 10 March 2015 Historical Dictionary of the Druzes 2 ed Rowman amp Littlefield p 50 ISBN 978 1 4422 4617 1 This variance has led to the confusion over the spelling of Libyan leader Muammar al Gaddafi s name in Latin letters In Western Arabic dialects the sound q is more preserved but can also be sometimes pronounced ɡ or as a simple k under Berber and French influence Bruce Ingham 1 January 1994 Najdi Arabic Central Arabian John Benjamins Publishing p 14 ISBN 90 272 3801 4 Lewis jr 2013 p 5 sfnp error no target CITEREFLewis jr 2013 help van den Boogert N 1989 Some notes on Maghrebi script PDF Manuscript of the Middle East 4 p 38 shows qaf with a superscript point in all four positions Gacek Adam 2008 The Arabic Manuscript Tradition Brill p 61 ISBN 978 90 04 16540 3 Gacek Adam 2009 Arabic Manuscripts A Vademecum for Readers Brill p 145 ISBN 978 90 04 17036 0 Muhammad Ghoniem M S M Saifullah cAbd ar Rahman Robert Squires amp cAbdus Samad Are There Scribal Errors In The Qur an see qif on a traffic sign written ڧڢ which is written elsewhere as قف Retrieved 2011 August 27External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Qoph letter Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Qoph amp oldid 1133001992, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
