Pe (letter)

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Pe is the seventeenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet ﻑ (in abjadi order).

The original sound value is a voiceless bilabial plosive: /p/; it retains this value in most Semitic languages except for Arabic, which having lost /p/ now uses it to render a voiceless labiodental fricative /f/.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Pi (Π), Latin P, and Cyrillic Pe.

Origins of Pe

Pe is usually assumed to come from a pictogram of a mouth (in Hebrew pe; in Arabic, fem).

Hebrew Pei

Orthographic variants
position in word	Various Print Fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi Script
	Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
non final	פ	פ	פ
final	ף	ף	ף

Variations on written form/pronunciation:

The letter Pei is one of the six letters which can receive a Dagesh Kal. The six are Bet, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, and Tav (see Hebrew Alphabet for more about these letters).

There are two orthographic variants of this letter which indicate a different pronunciation:

Name	Symbol	IPA	Transliteration	Example
Pei		/p/	p	pan
Fei		/f/	f	fan

Pei with the dagesh

When the Pei has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, it represents a voiceless bilabial plosive, /p/}. There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.

Pei without the dagesh (Fei)

When this letter appears as פ without the dagesh ("dot") in its center then it usually represents a voiceless labiodental fricative /f/.

Final form of Pei/Fei

At the end of words the letter's written form changes to a Pei/Fei Sophit (Final Pei/Fei):

• ף This does not alter the pronunciation (see above).

However, when a word in modern Hebrew borrowed from another language ends in /p/, normally a pe with a dagesh at the end of the word is used instead of the final form.

Significance of Pei:

In gematria, Pei represents the number 80. Its final form represents 800 but this is rarely used, Tav written twice (400+400) being used instead.

Arabic fāʼ

The letter is named fāʼ, and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

In the process of developing from Proto-Semitic, Proto-Semitic /p/ became Arabic /f/, and this is reflected in the use of the letter representing /p/ in other Semitic languages for /f/ in Arabic.

Fāʼ-fatḥa (فَـ /fa/) is a multi-function prefix most commonly equivalent to "so" or "so that." For example: نكتب naktub ("we write") → فنكتب fanaktub ("so we write").

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Last updated on Saturday March 01, 2008 at 17:34:16 PST (GMT -0800)
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