Gaf

The Gaf of Pashto alphabet in Nastaliq style.

One form of gaf

Gaf or Gāf may be the name of four different Perso-Arabic letters, all representing /ɡ/. They are all forms of the letter kāf, with additional diacritics, such as dots and lines. There are three forms, each used in different places:

• گ‎ in Perso-Arabic alphabet
• ݢ‎ in Malay
• ݣ‎ in Moroccan
• ګ‎ in Pashto

Gaf with line

گ‎ is based on kāf with an additional line. It is rarely used in Arabic itself, but may be used to represent the sound /ɡ/ when writing other languages. It is frequently used in Persian, Urdu and Kurdish and it is one of four letters which are not found in Arabic.

If not ݣ‎, this letter can be used to represent /ɡ/ in Morocco.

Gaf with single dot

ݢ‎ is derived from a variant form (ک‎) of kāf with the addition of a dot. It is not used in the Arabic language itself, but is used in the Jawi script of Malay to represent a voiced velar stop /ɡ/. Unicode includes two forms on this letter: one based on the standard Arabic kāf, ك‎, and one based on the variant form ک‎. The latter is the preferred form.

Gaf with three dots

ݣ ‎ is based on a variant form (ک‎) of kāf with the addition of three dots. It is used in Morocco, in formal Literary Arabic or in Moroccan Arabic to represent /ɡ/. Examples on its use, as in many city names such as Agadir (أݣادير‎, also written: أغادير‎) and family names such as El Guerrouj (الݣروج‎, also written: الكروج‎).

In Morocco, the Persian letter گ‎ can also be used instead.^{[citation needed]}

Its initial and medial forms are identical to ڭ‎, which represents /ŋ/ in some languages. However, their final and isolated forms are different.

See also Ng (Arabic).

In Pashto

In Pashto:

Character encoding

See also

• ڨ‎, a letter derived from qāf and used for /ɡ/ in Tunisia and Algeria

External links

• Notes on some Unicode Arabic characters: recommendations for usage (PDF)