Gaf

For other uses, see GAF.

Gaf or Gāf may be the name of three different Arabic letters, all representing the sound of "g". They are all forms of the letter kāf, with additional diacritics, such as dots and lines. There are three forms, each used in different places:

• گ in Persian
• ݢ in Malay
• ݣ in Moroccan
• گ in Urdu

Gaf with line

One form of gaf

گ is based on kāf with an additional line. It is rarely used in Arabic itself, but may be used to represent a voiced velar stop (IPA: /ɡ/) when writing other languages. It used in Persian and Kurdish frequently and it is one of four letters which are not found in Arabic.

Contextual forms
Final	Medial	Initial	Isolated
ﮓ	ﮕ	ﮔ	ﮒ

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 Arabic itself, but is used in the Jawi script of Malay to represent a voiced velar stop (IPA: /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.

Appearance	Code point	Name
ڬ	U+06AC	ARABIC LETTER KAF WITH DOT ABOVE
ݢ	U+0762	ARABIC LETTER KEHEH WITH DOT ABOVE	(preferred)

Gaf with three dots

ݣ is based on a variant form (ک) of kāf with the addition of three dots. It is used in informal Moroccan Arabic to represent a voiced velar stop (IPA: /ɡ/). The letter is also used officially to transliterate the voiced velar plosive as in many city names such as Agadir (أݣادير) and family names such as El Guerrouj (الݣروج).

Its initial and medial forms are identical to ڭ, which represents a velar nasal (IPA: /ŋ/) in some languages. However, their final and isolated forms are different.

See also

• ﭺ - Che (Arabic)
• ﭪ - Ve (Arabic)
• پ - Pe (Arabic)
• ژ - Zhe /ʒ/ (Arabic)

External links

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