Kaph

Kaph (also spelled Kap or Kaf) is the eleventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Kaf כ, Arabic alphabet Kāf ك, Persian alphabet ک. Its value is /k/.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Kappa (Κ), Latin K, and Cyrillic К.

Origin of Kaph

Kaph is thought to have been derived from a pictogram of a hand (in both modern Arabic and modern Hebrew, kaph means palm/grip).

Hebrew Kaf

Hebrew spelling: כָּף

Hebrew Pronunciation

The letter Kaf is one of the six letters which can receive a Dagesh Kal. The six are Bet, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, and Tav (see Hebrew Alphabet for more about these letters).

There are two orthographic variants of this letter which alter the pronunciation:

Kaph with the dagesh

When the Kaph has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, then it represents a voiceless velar plosive ([k]). There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.

Kaph without the dagesh (chaph)

When this letter appears as כ without the dagesh ("dot") in its center then it represents [x], like the ch in German "Bach".

In modern Israeli Hebrew the sound value of Chaph is the same as that of Heth, but many communities have differentiated between them.

Final form of Kaf

If the letter is at the end of a word the symbol is drawn differently. However, it does not change the pronunciation or transliteration in any way. The name for the letter is, Final Kaf (Hebrew: ‎ Kaf Sofit). There are four other Hebrew letters that take final forms, Tsadi, Mem, Nun, and Pei.

No longer commonly used in modern Hebrew, biblical Hebrew had a Kaph Sophit (Final Kaph):

Both the final forms of Chaph and Kaph take vowels. It is the only Hebrew final letter in which a vowel is necessary, and it is also the only vowel-taking final in which the consonant sound is pronounced first. The two vowels a final Chaph or Kaph takes are sh'va and chataf kamats. In most Hebrew fonts they are written directly inside the curve rather than in line with the vowels that precede them.

Significance of Kaph in Hebrew

In gematria, Kaph represents the number 20. Its final form represents 500 but this is rarely used, Tav and Qoph (400+100) being used instead.

As a prefix, Kaph is a preposition:

• It can mean "like" or "as". This is an abbreviation of כּמו, k'mo (like/as)
• In colloquial Hebrew, Kaph and Shin together have the meaning of "when". This is a contraction of כּאשר, ka'asher (when).

Arabic kāf

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

Kaf is almost universally pronounced as the voiceless velar plosive /k/, but in Iraqi, Kuwaiti Arabic and Gulf Arabic in general, it is sometimes pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar affricate [t͡ʃ] (possibly under Persian influence).

Use in Literary Arabic

In Literary Arabic, Kaf is used as a prefix meaning "like", "as", or "as though". For example, كطائر (/katˤaːʔir/), meaning "like a bird" or "as though a bird" (as in Hebrew, above). Unlike the Hebrew, the word is not a contraction; the prefix كَـ ka is one of the Arabic words for "like" or "as" (the other, مثل /miθl/, is unrelated). The /ka/ prefix sometimes has been added to other words to create fixed constructions. For instance, it is prefixed to ﺫلك /ðaːlik/ "this, that" to form the fixed word كذلك /kaðaːlik/ "like so, likewise."

Kaf is used as a possessive suffix for second-person singular nouns (feminine taking kāf-kasrah كِ, /ki/ and masculine kāf-fatḥah كَ /ka/); for instance, كتاب kitāb ("book") becomes كتابكَ kitābuka ("your book", where the person spoken to is masculine) كتابكِ kitābuki ("your book", where the person spoken to is feminine). At the ends of sentences and often in conversation the final vowel is suppressed, and thus كتابك kitābuk ("your book"). In several varieties of vernacular Arabic, however, the kaf with no harakat is the standard second-person possessive, with the Literary Arabic harakah shifted to the letter before the kaf: thus masculine "your book" in these varieties is كتابَك kitābak and feminine "your book" كتابِك kitābik.

Persian kaph

In Persian alphabet "Kaph" has a slightly different final form from the Mashriqi Arabic (ک as opposed to ك) and thus takes a different codepoint in Unicode. But it uses the same final form as the Maghrebi style arabic.

See also

• Gaf
• Ngaph