Qoph
Qoph is the nineteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician qōp ?, Hebrew qūp̄, Aramaic qop ?, Syriac qōp̄ ܩ, and Arabic qāf. It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian ?, South Arabian ?, and Geʽez ቀ.
Its original sound value was a West Semitic emphatic stop, presumably. In Maltese the q is an explosive stop sound e.g. qalb, qattus, baqq. 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, or the back of a head and neck.According to an older suggestion, it may also have been a picture of a monkey and its tail.
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 and Φ.
Arabic qāf
The Arabic letter ق is named قاف . It is written in several ways depending on 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, the letter is pronounced voiced, 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 as its standard pronunciation of the letter, but dialectal pronunciations vary as follows:The three main pronunciations:
- : in most of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, Southern and Western Yemen and parts of Oman, Northern Iraq, parts of the Levant. 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, Northern and Eastern Yemen and parts of Oman, Southern Iraq, some parts within Jordan, eastern Syria and southern Palestine, Upper Egypt, 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 Egypt, as well as some North African towns such as Tlemcen and Fez.
- : In Sudanese and some forms of Yemeni, even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
- : In rural Palestinian it is often pronounced as a voiceless velar plosive, even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
- : In some positions in Najdi, though this pronunciation is fading in favor of.
- : Optionally in 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 and some Yemeni dialects, and sometimes in Gulf Arabic by Persian influence, even in loanwords from Modern Standard Arabic or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic.
Velar gāf
The Standard Arabic 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:
Pronunciation across other languages
Maghrebi variant
The Maghrebi style of writing ' is different: having only a single point above; when the letter is isolated or word-final, it may sometimes become unpointed.| Position in word: | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
| Form of letter: |
The earliest Arabic manuscripts show ' in several variants: pointed 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 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.
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 containing this letter may represent it as c or k, e.g. Cain for Hebrew Qayin, or Kenan for Qenan.
Pronunciation
In modern Israeli Hebrew the letter is also called . The letter represents ; i.e., no distinction is made between the pronunciations of Qof and Kaph with Dagesh.However, many historical groups have made that distinction, with Qof being pronounced by Iraqi Jews and other Mizrahim, or even as by Yemenite Jews influenced by Yemeni Arabic.
Qoph is consistently transliterated into classical Greek with the unaspirated〈κ〉/k/, while Kaph 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 and therefore were most likely not pharyngealised, but ejective, pharyngealisation being a result of Arabisation.