Ve (Arabic letter)

This article is about the fā-based letter. For the vāw-based letter used in Uyghur, see Waw (letter) § Arabic Wāw#Derived letters.

ڤ is a letter of the Arabic-based Afrikaans, Comorian, Jawi, Kurdish, Pegon, and Wakhi scripts. It is derived from the Arabic letter fāʾ (ف) with two additional dots. It represents the sound /v/ and named Ve in the Kurdish, Comorian and Wakhi alphabets, and represents the sound /p/ and named Pa in the Jawi (used for Malay) and Pegon (used for Javanese) alphabets.

South African text from 1872 by Abu Bakr Effendi in Arabic Afrikaans (upper) and Arabic (lower) showing The ڤ in the word ڤوت (vote) used in Arabic even though the Modern Standard Arabic word for (vote) is صوت /sˤawt/.

the Greek surname Cavafis in Egypt written كڤافيس.

Ve originated as one of the new letters added for the Perso-Arabic alphabet to write New Persian, and it was used for the sound /β/. This letter is no longer used in Persian, as the [β]-sound changed to [b], e.g. archaic زڤان /zaβɑn/ > زبان /zæbɒn/ 'language'

The letter is sometimes used optionally in Arabic to write foreign proper nouns and loanwords with the phoneme /v/ instead of using the standard letter ف /f/, such as ڤولڤو (Volvo), ڤيتنام (Vietnam), and نوڤمبر (November) instead of the standard transcribe فولفو, فيتنام, and نوفمبر. In Egyptian Arabic, it is called فه بتلات نقط (fe be talat noʾaṭ, "Fa' with three dots"). The letter is written ڥ‎ in Algeria and Tunisia, with the dots moved underneath to differentiate it from gāf ‎‎‎ڨ‎‎‎.

The character ڤ is mapped in Unicode under position U+06A4.

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ڤ‎	ـڤ‎	ـڤـ‎	ڤـ‎

The character ڥ‎ is mapped in Unicode under position U+06A5.

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ڥ‎	ـڥ‎	ـڥـ‎	ڥـ‎

ڨ

Tunisian cookie packaging, showing a three-dotted Qāf used to represent /g/ in the Arabic transliteration of Galletes (gālāt).

An Algerian sign transcribing Greenwich as ڨرينش‎ (grīnish).

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ڨ‎	ـڨ‎	ـڨـ‎	ڨـ‎

In Tunisian and in Algerian, (ڨ, looks similar to ق but with three dots) is used for /ɡ/, such as in names of places or persons containing a voiced velar stop, as in Gafsa (in Tunisia) or Guelma (in Algeria). If the usage of that letter is not possible for technical restrictions, qāf (ق) is often used instead.

In Arabic script representations of the Chechen language, ڨ‎ is used to represent the uvular ejective /qʼ/, and /v/ in Hindko language, in Pakistan, called vaf.

varin and vewar from Iraqi Kurdistan ڤ‍ارين و ‍ڤ‍يوار من كردستان العراق

See also

• ﭖ - Pe
• ﭺ - Che
• گ - Gaf
• ژ - Zhe
• ۋ - Ve