qoph

← Tsade Qoph Resh →
Phoenician	Hebrew	Aramaic	Syriac	Arabic
	ק		ܩ	ق‍,ق
Alphabetic derivatives		Greek	Latin	Cyrillic
		Ϙ	Q	Ҁ
Phonemic representation:				kˤ, q
Position in alphabet:				19
Numerical (Gematria/Abjad) value:				100

Qoph or Qop (In Modern Hebrew: Kuf/Kof, Arabic: Qāf) is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew ק and Arabic alphabet qāf ق (in abjadi order). Its sound value is an emphatic [kˤ] or [q]. The OHED (Oxford Hebrew English Dictionary) gives the letter Qoph a transliteration value of Q or a K and a final transliteration value as a ck. In Hebrew Gematria, it has the numerical value of 100.

It became over time the letter qima in certain ancient varieties of the Coptic alphabet (which is itself an evolution of the ancient Greek alphabet), later added back into the ancient Greek alphabet itself as the ancien letter qoppa (looking more like the Phoenician letter qoph), and finally the letter Q in the Latin alphabet from the ancient Coptic-Greek qima or qoppa (after Coptic texts were translated into Greek and Latin by Coptic scribes, to preserve the Coptic distinction with the sound /k/ for which they used another older koppa form of the classical Greek kappa letter).

Origins of qoph

The origin of qoph is usually thought to be a sewing needle. Specifically the eye of needle, as the Paleo-Hebrew glyph strongly resembles a needle.(In Hebrew, qoph, spelled in Hebrew letters as קוף, means "hole.") It is also hypothesized that the qoph could also be a monkey as they share the same spelling. There are two vocalizations for קוף. In Hebrew, qoph means "monkey" and quph means "needle".^[1] Both pronunciations are common.

Others have proposed that it originated from a pictogram of someone's head and neck (qāf in Arabic meant "nape"); qaw is also reconstructed as a proto-Afro-Asiatic word for "neck" (ḫḫ in Egyptian), and in some dialects of Arabic, qāf is pronounced as a hamza (ء), a glottal stop in the back of the throat — similar to the part of the throat used to make the sound of the qoph. In hieroglyphs, two determinatives for "neck", the F10 and F11 glyphs in the Gardiner's sign list (the F12 glyph for "nape"), are both vertical lines topped with heads with horns. The F10 glyph is a line underneath an ox head (and a cross toward the bottom of the line), which could conceivably have evolved into the Arabic alef with a hamza on top (the pronounced, and sometimes written, Egyptian Arabic way of saying qāf). The Arabic hamza far more closely resembles the earlier iterations of the older Semitic aleph than does the Arabic alef character itself, which is just a vertical line on top of which the hamza can sit.

Hebrew Qof

Orthographic variants
Various Print Fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi Script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ק	ק	ק

Hebrew spelling: קוֹף

Hebrew Pronunciation

In modern Israeli Hebrew, Qof usually represents /k/; i.e., no distinction is made between Qof and Kaph. 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.

Significance of Qof

Qof in gematria 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 (i.e. when she was 100 years old, she was as sinless as when she was 20).

Qof is used in an Israeli phrase: after a child will say something false, one might say "B'Shin Qoph, Resh" (With Shin, Qoph, Resh). These letters spell Sheqer, which is the Hebrew word for a lie. It would be akin to an English speaker saying "That's an L-I-E."

Arabic qāf

The letter ق is named قاف qāf, and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

The text in the folio appears below in modern script. Note how the Qaf's and Fa's are rendered:

منكم فقد ضل سواء السبيل فيما نقضهم ميثـٰـقهم لعنـٰـهم وجعلنا قلوبهم قـٰـسية يحرفون الكلم عن مواضعه ونسوا حظاً مما ذكروا به ولا تزال تطلع‎

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:

• In Egyptian Arabic, as well as Levantine Arabic and forms of Moroccan Arabic from around Fes, the letter is often pronounced as the hamza or glottal stop [ʔ] but is approximated to [k] or preserved in several Modern Standard Arabic loanwords.
• In Sa'idi (the Arabic of the Sa'id, Southern or Upper Egypt), in some rural areas of Jordan, in much if not most of the Maghreb and some forms of Yemeni Arabic, it is frequently pronounced as the voiced velar plosive [ɡ].
• In Sudanese Arabic and some forms of Yemeni Arabic, it is pronounced as the voiced uvular plosive [ɢ].
• In rural Palestinian Arabic it is often pronounced as the voiceless velar plosive [k].
• In the United Arab Emirates and Gulf Arabic in general, it is often pronounced as the voiced postalveolar affricate [d͡ʒ].
• In some variants of Maghrebi Arabic (especially North Tunisian Arabic and the Arabic of the Middle Atlas in Morocco), it retains its MSA pronunciation [q].

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.

The Maghrebi style of writing qaf is different. Once the prevalent style, it is now only used in Maghribi countries for writing Qur'an with the exception of Libya which adopted the Mashriqi form. There is no possibility of confusing it with the letter fa' as it is written with a dot underneath (ڢ‎) in the Maghribi script.^[2]

Persian

In Iranian Persian, the letter is pronounced [ɣ]~[ɢ].

References

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