Qoph

This article is about the letter Qoph. For the band, see Qoph (band).

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

Qoph or Qop (in Modern Hebrew: Qof/Kof, Arabic: qāf) is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads or alphabets, including the Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, and Hebrew ק or the Arabic alphabet qāf 'ق' (in abjadi order). Its sound value is an emphatic [kˤ] or [q]. In Hebrew gematria, it has the numerical value of 100.

The origin of qoph is uncertain. It is usually suggested to have originally depicted either a sewing needle, specifically the eye of a needle (the Hebrew קוף means "hole"), or the back of a head and neck (qāf in Arabic meant "nape"). According to an older suggestion, it may also have been a picture of a monkey and its tail.

Hebrew Qof

The Oxford Hebrew-English Dictionary gives the letter Qoph a transliteration value of q or k; and, when word-final, it may be transliterated as ck.

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

Hebrew spelling: קוֹף

Pronunciation

In modern Israeli Hebrew the letter is also called kuf. The letter 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", meaning that when she was 100 years old, she was as sinless as when she was 20.

After a child says something false, one might retort: "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 in several ways depending on its position in the word:

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form:	ق‎	ـق‎	ـقـ‎	قـ‎

It is usually transliterated into Latin script as q, though some scholarly works use ḳ.

According to Sibawayh, author of the first book on Arabic grammar, the letter is pronounced as a voiced phoneme. 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 a glottal stop [ʔ] but is approximated to [k] or preserved in several Modern Standard Arabic loanwords.
• In Sa'idi Arabic (of Southern Egypt), in some rural areas of Jordan, parts of the Arabian Peninsula, in a few parts of the Maghreb and some forms of Yemeni Arabic, it is frequently pronounced as a voiced velar plosive [ɡ].
• In Sudanese Arabic and some forms of Yemeni Arabic, it is pronounced as a voiced uvular plosive [ɢ].
• In rural Palestinian Arabic it is often pronounced as a voiceless velar plosive [k].
• In the United Arab Emirates and Gulf Arabic in general, it is pronounced as a voiced postalveolar affricate [d͡ʒ] usually in place of etymological /iq/.
• In some variants of Northwest African 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 Maghribi text renders qāf and fāʼ differently than elsewhere would:

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

Maghrebi variant

The Maghrebi style of writing qāf is different: having only a single point (dot) above; when the letter is isolated or word-final, it may sometimes become unpointed.

The Maghrebi qāf

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Form of letter:	ٯ‎	ـٯ‎	ـڧـ‎	ڧـ‎

The earliest Arabic manuscripts show qāf in several variants: pointed (above or below) or unpointed. Then the prevalent convention was having a point above for fāʼ and a point below for qāf; this practice is now only preserved in manuscripts from the Maghribi, with the exception of Libya, where the Mashriqi form (two dots above: ق) prevails.

Within Maghribi texts, there is no possibility of confusing it with the letter fāʼ, as it is instead written with a dot underneath (ڢ‎) in the Maghribi script.

Persian

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

Character encodings

Character	ק		ق		ܩ		ࠒ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER QOF		ARABIC LETTER QAF		SYRIAC LETTER QAPH		SAMARITAN LETTER QUF
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1511	U+05E7	1602	U+0642	1833	U+0729	2066	U+0812
UTF-8	215 167	D7 A7	217 130	D9 82	220 169	DC A9	224 160 146	E0 A0 92
Numeric character reference	ק	ק	ق	ق	ܩ	ܩ	ࠒ	ࠒ

Character	𐎖		𐡒		𐤒
Unicode name	UGARITIC LETTER QOPA		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER QOPH		PHOENICIAN LETTER QOF
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	66454	U+10396	67666	U+10852	67858	U+10912
UTF-8	240 144 142 150	F0 90 8E 96	240 144 161 146	F0 90 A1 92	240 144 164 146	F0 90 A4 92
UTF-16	55296 57238	D800 DF96	55298 56402	D802 DC52	55298 56594	D802 DD12
Numeric character reference	𐎖	𐎖	𐡒	𐡒	𐤒	𐤒