Kaph

Kaph (also spelled kaf) is the eleventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Kāp , Hebrew Kāf כ, Aramaic Kāp , Syriac Kāp̄ ܟܟ, and Arabic Kāf ک/ك (in Abjadi order).

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

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
כ	כ	כ

Hebrew spelling: כָּף

Hebrew pronunciation

The letter kaf is one of the six letters which can receive a dagesh kal. The other five are bet, gimel, daleth, 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, 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 it represents [χ], like the ch in German "Bach".

In modern Israeli Hebrew the letter heth is often pronounced as a [χ], but many communities have differentiated between these letters as in other Semitic languages.

Final form of kaf

Orthographic variants
Various Print Fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Standard	Sans-serif	Serif
ך	ך	ך

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 (Kaf Sofit). Four additional Hebrew letters take final forms: tsadi, mem, nun, and pei. Kaf/khaf is the only Hebrew letter that can take a vowel in its word-final form which is pronounced after the consonant, that vowel being the qamatz.

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", as in literary Arabic (see below).
• In colloquial Hebrew, kaph and shin together have the meaning of "when". This is a contraction of כאשר, ka'asher (when).

Arabic kāf

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

There are three variants of the letter:

• the basic form is used for the Arabic language and many other languages:

• the cross-barred form, al-kāf al-mashkūlah/al-mashqūqah,^[1] is used predominantly as an alternative form of the version above in all forms of Arabic (excluding Modern Standard Arabic) and in the languages of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• the long s-shaped variant form, al-kāf al-mabsūṭah,^[2] which is only used in Arabic texts and for writing Qur'an. It is used consistently in the Sindhi language for unaspirated /k/:

In varieties of Arabic kāf is almost universally pronounced as the voiceless velar plosive /k/, but in rural Palestinian and Iraqi, it is pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar affricate [t͡ʃ].

Use in literary Arabic

In literary Arabic, kāf is used as a prefix meaning "like", "as", or "as though". For example, كَطَائِر (/katˤaːʔir/), meaning "like a bird" or "as though a bird" (as in Hebrew, above). The prefix كَـ ka is one of the Arabic words for "like" or "as" (the other, مِثْل /miθl/, is unrelated). The /ka/ prefix sometimes has been added to other words to create fixed constructions. For instance, it is prefixed to ﺫَلِك /ðaːlik/ "this, that" to form the fixed word كَذَلِك /kaðaːlik/ "like so, likewise."

kāf 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, كِتَاب kitāb ("book") becomes كِتَابُكَ kitābuka ("your book", where the person spoken to is masculine) كِتَابُكِ 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 كِتَابُك kitābuk ("your book"). In several varieties of vernacular Arabic, however, the kāf with no harakat is the standard second-person possessive, with the literary Arabic harakah shifted to the letter before the kāf: thus masculine "your book" in these varieties is كِتَابَك kitābak and feminine "your book" كِتَابِك kitābik.

Character encodings

See also

• Ca (Indic)
• Gaf
• Ka (Indic)
• Ngaph

External links

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