Qoph

Qoph or Qop (In modern Hebrew: Kuf, Arabic: Qāf) is the nineteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Ivrit|ק and Arabic alphabet ArabDIN|qāf _ar. ق (in abjadi order). Its sound value is an emphatic (pharyngealized) velar stop, IPA2|kˁ, or uvular stop IPA|/q/.

It became over time the letter Q in the Latin alphabet, and the letter Qoppa in certain early varieties of the Greek alphabet.

Origins of Qoph

The origin of Qoph is usually thought to have come from a pictogram of a monkey, with the body and tail shown (In Hebrew, "Qoph", spelled in Hebrew letters as קוף, means "monkey", and "K'of" in Old Egyptian meant a type of monkey). Others have proposed that it originated from a pictogram of someone's head and neck ("Qaph" in Arabic meant the nape).

Hebrew Kuf

Hebrew Pronunciation

In modern Israeli Hebrew, Kuf usually represents IPA|/k/; i.e., no distinction is made between Kuf and Kaph. However, many historical groups have made that distinction, with Kuf being pronounced as a voiceless uvular plosive by Iraqi Jews and other Mizrahim (IPA2|q) or even as a voiced velar plosive by Yemenite Jews (IPA2|g) (under the influence of Yemeni Arabic).

ignificance of Kuf

Kuf in gematria represents the number 100. Sarah is described in Genesis Rabba as "בת ק' כבת כ' שנה לחטא", literally "At Kuf years of age, she was like Kaph years of age in sin" (i.e. when she was 100 years old, she was as sinless as when she was 20).

Kuf is used in an Israeli phrase: after a child will say something false, one might say "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 is named "qāf", and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:The letter "qāf" is matched only by "ǧīm" among Arabic consonants in the number of pronunciations applied to it dialectically. As noted above, Modern Standard Arabic has the voiceless uvular plosive IPA2|q as its standard pronunciation of the letter, but in northern Egyptian Arabic, as well as Levantine Arabic, the letter is often pronounced as the "hamza" or glottal stop IPA|/ʔ/; in Sa'idi (the Arabic of the Sa'id, Southern or Upper Egypt) and some forms of Yemeni Arabic, it is frequently pronounced the voiced velar plosive, IPA|/ɡ/; and in rural Palestinian Arabic it is often pronounced as IPA|/k/. This variance has led to the confusion over the spelling of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi's name in Latin letters.

The Maghribi style of writing qaf is different. Once the prevalent style, it is now only used in Maghribi countries for writing Qur'an with the exception of Libya which adopted the Mashriqi form. There is no possibility of confusing it with the letter fa' as fa' is written with a dot underneath in the Maghribi script [Muhammad Ghoniem, M S M Saifullah, cAbd ar-Rahmân Robert Squires & cAbdus Samad, [http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/Scribal/scribal.html Are There Scribal Errors In The Qur'ân?] , Retrieved 2008-March-20] .

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