Pe is the seventeenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician pē, Hebrew pē, Aramaic pē, Syriac pē ܦ, and Arabic fāʾ (in abjadi order).The original sound value is a voiceless bilabial plosive pronounced as //p// and it retains this value in most Semitic languages, except for Arabic, where the sound pronounced as //p// changed into the voiceless labiodental fricative pronounced as //f//, carrying with it the pronunciation of the letter.Not to be confused with the Turned g.The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Pi (Π), Latin P, and Cyrillic П.
Pe is usually assumed to come from a pictogram of a "mouth" (in Hebrew pe; in Arabic, فا fah).
The letter Arabic: ف is named Arabic: فاء . It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
In the process of developing from Proto-Semitic, Proto-Semitic pronounced as //p// became Arabic pronounced as //f//, and this is reflected in the use of the letter representing pronounced as //p// in other Semitic languages for pronounced as //f// in Arabic.
Examples on usage in Modern Standard Arabic:
In Maghrebi scripts, the i'ajami dot in has traditionally been written underneath (Arabic: ڢ). Once the prevalent style, it is now mostly used in countries of the Maghreb in ceremonial situations or for writing Qur'an, with the exception of Libya and Algeria, which adopted the Mashriqi form (dot above).
| Form of letter: |
The Maghrebi alphabet, to write (Arabic: ق), a letter that resembles (Arabic: ف) in the initial and medial forms is used, but it is really a with a single dot (Arabic: ڧ).
In the Arabic orthographies of Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz, the letter has a descender in the final and isolated positions, much like the Maghrebi version of .[1] [2] Theoretically this shape could be approximated by using, but in practice is used in databases of these languages, and most commercial fonts for these languages give the codepoint of the usual Arabic a shape like Arabic: ڧ.When the Uyghur keyboard layout for Microsoft Windows was first added in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, the key combination resulted in .[3] The Uyghur keyboard layout in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 changed that key combination to give .[4] On the newer systems, the old keyboard layout is still available under the name Uyghur (Legacy).
Normally, the letter Arabic: ف renders pronounced as //f// sound, but may also be used some names and loanwords where it can render pronounced as //v//, might be arabized as pronounced as //f// in accordance to its spelling, e.g., Arabic: يُونِيلِفِر (Unilever). It may be used interchangeably with the modified letter Arabic: [[ڤ]] - (with 3 dots above) in this case. The letter fāʾ with three dots above is no longer used in Persian, as the pronounced as /link/-sound changed to pronounced as /link/, e.g. archaic Persian: زڤان pronounced as //zaβɑn// > Persian: زبان pronounced as //zæbɒn// 'language'[5]
The character is mapped in Unicode under position U+06A4.
The Maghrebi style, used in Northwestern Africa, the dots moved underneath (Unicode U+06A5), because it is based on the other style of :
| Code point | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial | Unicode character name (or descriptive synonyms used in the JoiningType and JoiningGroup datatables) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARABIC LETTER FEH | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER DOTLESS FEH | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH DOT MOVED BELOW | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH DOT BELOW | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 3 DOTS ABOVE = VEH | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 3 DOTS BELOW = MAGHRIBI VEH | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 4 DOTS ABOVE = PEHEH | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 2 DOTS BELOW | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 3 DOTS POINTING UPWARDS BELOW | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH DOT BELOW AND THREE DOTS ABOVE | |||||
| ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN FEH |
The Hebrew spelling is Hebrew: פֵּא. It is also romanized pei or pey, especially when used in Yiddish.[6] [7]
| Various print fonts | Cursive Hebrew | Rashi script | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serif | Monospaced | |||||
| non final | פ | פ | פ | |||
| final | ף | ף | ף |
See main article: Modern Hebrew phonology. The letter Pe is one of the six letters which can receive a Dagesh Kal. The six are Bet, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, and Tav.
A notable variation on the letter Pe is the Pe Kefulah (Doubled Pe), also known as the Pei Lefufah (Wrapped Pe). The Pe Kefulah is written as a small Pe scribed within a larger Pe. This atypical letter appears in Torah scrolls (most often Yemenite Torahs[8] but is also present in Sephardic and Ashkenazi Torahs), manuscripts, and some modern printed Hebrew Bibles. When the Pe is written in the form of a Doubled Pe, this adds a layer of deeper meaning to the Biblical text.[9] This letter variation can appear on the final and non-final forms of the Pe.
There are two orthographic variants of this letter which indicate a different pronunciation:
| Name | Symbol | IPA | Transliteration | as in the English word | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pe | align=center | pronounced as //p// | p | pan | |
| Fe | align=center | pronounced as //f// | f | fan | |
When the Pe has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, it represents a voiceless bilabial plosive, pronounced as //p//. There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.
When Pe appears without the dagesh dot in its center (Hebrew: פ), then it usually represents a voiceless labiodental fricative pronounced as //f//.
At the end of words, the letter's written form changes to a Pe/Fe Sophit (Final Pe/Fe): Hebrew: ף.
When a word in modern Hebrew borrowed from another language ends with pronounced as //p//, the non-final form is used (e.g. Hebrew: ּפִילִיפ pronounced as //ˈfilip// "Philip"), while borrowings ending in pronounced as //f// still use the Pe Sofit (e.g. Hebrew: כֵּיף pronounced as //kef// "fun", from Arabic). This is because native Hebrew words, which always use the final form at the end, cannot end in pronounced as //p//.
In gematria, Pe represents the number 80. Its final form represents 800 but this is rarely used, Tav written twice (400+400) being used instead.