Kaf (huruf Semit)

← Yod Kaf Lamed →
Fenisia	Ibrani	Aram	Suryani	Arab
	כ,ך		ܟܟ	ك‍,ك
Alfabet turunan		Yunani	Latin	Kiril
		Κ	K	К
Representasi fonemik:				k, x
Urutan dalam alfabet:				11
Nilai huruf/Gematria:				20

Kaf (dalam bahasa Inggris juga dieja Kaph) adalah huruf ke-11 dalam banyak aksara Semitik, termasuk abjad Fenisia, abjad Aram, abjad Arab Kāf ك (dalam urutan abjadi), abjad Ibrani Kaf כ.

Huruf Fenisia menghasilkan Alfabet Yunani Kappa (Κ), Alfabet Latin K, dan Alfabet Sirilik Ka (К).

Asal usul

"Kaf" diduga diturunkan dari pictogram sebuah "tangan" (baik dalam Arab modern dan Ibrani modern, kaf berarti "telapak tangan" atau "genggaman tangan").

Huruf Ibrani Kaf

Orthographic variants
Various Print Fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi Script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
כ	כ	כ

Hebrew spelling: כָּף

Pelafalan

Artikel utama: Hebrew phonology

The letter Kaf 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 alter the pronunciation:

Name	Symbol	IPA	Transliteration	Example
Kaf	כּ	[k]	k	kangaroo
Chaf	כ	[χ] or [x]	ch or kh	loch

Kaph with the dagesh

When the Kaph has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, then it represents a voiceless velar plosive ([k]). There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.

Kaph without the dagesh (chaph)

When this letter appears as כ without the dagesh ("dot") in its center then it represents [χ], like the ch in German "Bach".

In modern Israeli Hebrew the sound value of Chaph is the same as that of Heth, but many communities have differentiated between them.

Final form of Kaf

Orthographic variants
Various Print Fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi Script
Standard	Sans-serif	Serif
ך	ך	ך

If the letter is at the end of a word the symbol is drawn differently. However, it does not change the pronunciation or transliteration in any way. The name for the letter is, Final Kaf (bahasa Ibrani: ‎ Kaf Sofit). There are four other Hebrew letters that take final forms, Tsadi, Mem, Nun, and Pei. Kaf/khaf is the only Hebrew letter that can take a vowel in its word-final form that is pronounced after the consonant, that vowel being the qamatz.

Name	Alternate Name	Symbol
Final Kaf	Kaf Sofit	ךּ
Final Chaf	Chaf Sofit	ך

Significance of Kaph in Hebrew

In gematria, Kaph represents the number 20. Its final form represents 500 but this is rarely used, Tav and Qoph (400+100) being used instead.

As a prefix, Kaph is a preposition:

• It can mean "like" or "as". This is an abbreviation of כּמו, k'mo (like/as)
• In colloquial Hebrew, Kaph and Shin together have the meaning of "when". This is a contraction of כּאשר, ka'asher (when).

Huruf Arab kāf

The letter is named kāf, and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word (these are the standard letter forms used for the for Western variants of the Arabic language):

Cara penulisan huruf (ك)
Posisi Lepas	Posisi Awal	Posisi Tengah	Posisi Akhir
ك	كـ	ـكـ	ـك

It also has a long variant form, which is not distinguished in the Arabic language, but may be seen more frequently in other languages than Arabic (and it is used consistently for the Sindhi language, see below):

Cara penulisan huruf (ڪ)
Posisi Lepas	Posisi Awal	Posisi Tengah	Posisi Akhir
ڪ	ڪـ	ـڪـ	ـڪ

Kaf is almost universally pronounced as the voiceless velar plosive /k/, but in rural Palestinian, Iraqi, Kuwaiti and Gulf Arabic in general, it is sometimes pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar affricate [t͡ʃ].

Use in Literary Arabic

In Literary Arabic, Kaf is used as a prefix meaning "like", "as", or "as though". For example, كَطَائِر (/katˤaːʔir/), meaning "like a bird" or "as though a bird" (as in Hebrew, above). The prefix كَـ ka is one of the Arabic words for "like" or "as" (the other, مِثْل /miθl/, is unrelated). The /ka/ prefix sometimes has been added to other words to create fixed constructions. For instance, it is prefixed to ﺫَلِك /ðaːlik/ "this, that" to form the fixed word كَذَلِك /kaðaːlik/ "like so, likewise."

Kaf is used as a possessive suffix for second-person singular nouns (feminine taking kāf-kasrah كِ, /ki/ and masculine kāf-fatḥah كَ /ka/); for instance, كِتَاب kitāb ("book") becomes كِتَابُكَ kitābuka ("your book", where the person spoken to is masculine) كِتَابُكِ kitābuki ("your book", where the person spoken to is feminine). At the ends of sentences and often in conversation the final vowel is suppressed, and thus كِتَابُك kitābuk ("your book"). In several varieties of vernacular Arabic, however, the kaf with no harakat is the standard second-person possessive, with the Literary Arabic harakah shifted to the letter before the kaf: thus masculine "your book" in these varieties is كِتَابَك kitābak and feminine "your book" كِتَابِك kitābik.

Persia dan Urdu kaph

In the Persian alphabet and the Urdu alphabet, "Kaph" has slightly different isolated or final forms from the Mashriqi Arabic (ک as opposed to ك) and thus takes a different codepoint in Unicode. But it uses the same final form as the Maghrebi style Arabic. These simplified forms are shown here:

Cara penulisan huruf (ک)
Posisi Lepas	Posisi Awal	Posisi Tengah	Posisi Akhir
ک	کـ	ـکـ	ـک

In addition, these variants are used distinctly in the Sindhi as separate letters, to differentiate khē (using the simplified forms) from kāf (written in Sindhi with the long variant form shown in the subsection above).

Kode karakter

Informasi karakter

Pratayang	כ		ך		ك		ک		ܟ
Nama Unicode	HURUF IBRANI KAF		HURUF IBRANI FINAL KAF		HURUF ARAB KAF		HURUF ARAB KEHEH		HURUF SURYANI KAPH
Pengodean	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1499	U+05DB	1498	U+05DA	1603	U+0643	1705	U+06A9	1823	U+071F
UTF-8	215 155	D7 9B	215 154	D7 9A	217 131	D9 83	218 169	DA A9	220 159	DC 9F
Referensi karakter numerik	כ	כ	ך	ך	ك	ك	ک	ک	ܟ	ܟ

Informasi karakter

Pratayang	ࠊ		𐎋		𐡊		𐤊
Nama Unicode	HURUF SAMARIA KAAF		HURUF UGARIT KAF		HURUF ARAM IMPERIAL KAPH		HURUF FENISIA KAF
Pengodean	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	2058	U+080A	66443	U+1038B	67658	U+1084A	67850	U+1090A
UTF-8	224 160 138	E0 A0 8A	240 144 142 139	F0 90 8E 8B	240 144 161 138	F0 90 A1 8A	240 144 164 138	F0 90 A4 8A
UTF-16	2058	080A	55296 57227	D800 DF8B	55298 56394	D802 DC4A	55298 56586	D802 DD0A
Referensi karakter numerik	ࠊ	ࠊ	𐎋	𐎋	𐡊	𐡊	𐤊	𐤊

Lihat pula

• Gaf
• Ngaph