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Qoph or Qop is the nineteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Qōp , Hebrew Qof ק‎, Aramaic Qop , Syriac Qōp̄ ܩ, and Arabic 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 Template:Hebrew, 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:

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.

Persian

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

Character encodings

References

1. Travers Wood, Henry Craven Ord Lanchester, A Hebrew Grammar, 1913, p. 7. A. B. Davidson, Hebrew Primer and Grammar, 2000, p. 4. The meaning is doubtful. "Eye of a needle" has been suggested, and also "knot" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology vol. 45.
2. Isaac Taylor, History of the Alphabet: Semitic Alphabets, Part 1, 2003: "The old explanation, which has again been revived by Halévy, is that it denotes an 'ape,' the character Q being taken to represent an ape with its tail hanging down. It may also be referred to a Talmudic root which would signify an 'aperture' of some kind, as the 'eye of a needle,' ... Lenormant adopts the more usual explanation that the word means a 'knot'.
3. e.g., The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition
4. Kees Versteegh, The Arabic Language, pg. 131. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001. Paperback edition. ISBN 9780748614363

• Phoenician alphabet
• Arabic letters
• Hebrew alphabet