Gaf

The Gaf of Pashto alphabet

One form of gaf

Gaf, or gāf, may be the name of 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 four forms, each used in different places:

• گ‬ in Perso-Arabic and sometimes in Moroccan, occidental Algerian and many Berber languages
• ݢ‬ in Jawi
• ݣ‬ in Moroccan, occidental Algerian and many Berber languages
• ګ‬ in Pashto
• ڳ‬ in Saraiki

For speakers with /ɡ/ as the main phoneme for ق‬, the name can be used for the letter when trying to explain a pronunciation/spelling of a word, whether the word is foreign or dialectal.

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, Pashto, Uyghur, Urdu and Kurdish and is one of four Perso-Arabic letters not found in Arabic.

ݣ‬ can also be used to represent /ɡ/ in Morocco, occidental Algeria and many Berber languages.

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.^[1]

Gaf with line and two dots

ڳ‬ is derived from a variant form (ک‬) of kāf with the addition of a line and two dots. It is used not in Arabic alphabet itself but in the Saraiki alphabet.

Gaf with three dots

The Arabic signage for the Argana cafe in Marrakesh's Jemaa el-Fnaa features a prominent gaf with three dots.

ݣ‬ is based on a variant form (ک‬) of kāf with the addition of three dots. It is used in western Algerian Arabic (elsewhere in Algeria, ڨ is used), in Moroccan Arabic (though Persian گ can also be used) and in many Berber languages to represent /ɡ/. Examples of its use include city names (such as Agadir أݣادير‬, also written: أغادير‬) and family names (such as El Guerrouj الݣروج‬, also written: الكروج‬). In Morocco, western Algeria, and many Berber languages, the Persian letter گ‬ can also be used instead.

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

Gaf with ring

In Pashto:

Gaf with inverted stroke

In Chechen on the Arabic character ࢰ‬ is used to write a Кӏ (Kh).

Character encoding

See also

• ڨ‬, a letter derived from qāf and used for [ɡ] in Tunisia and Algeria.

References

External links

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