Gāf (Persian letter)
Arabic letter gaf (U+06AF) or gāf, used in Persian, Urdu, Khowar, Uyghur, etc. to represent the phoneme /ɡ/
Gāf (گ; Persian: گاف), is the name of different Perso-Arabic letters, all representing /ɡ/. They are all derived from the letter Kāf (ک), with additional diacritics, such as dots and lines. In name and shape, it is a variant of Kāf (ک).
It is also one of the five letters the Persian alphabet added to the Arabic alphabet, which are; Že (ژ), Če (چ), and Gaf (گ), in addition to the obsolete Ve (ڤ). Its numerical value is 5000 (see Abjad numerals), except for the Jawi variant (ݢ) which instead has a value of 6000. There are four forms, each used in different alphabets:
Gāf (گ) in the Persian alphabet, Tausug written in the Arabic script
Gāf (ݢ) in the Jawi script
Gāf (ࢴ or ڮ) in the Pegon script
Gāf (ګ) in Pashto
Use in Arabic
A non-standard letter to the Arabic alphabet; Gāf (گ) has been traditionally used in Iraq and parts of the Levant for /g/. In Morocco, a similar letter (ݣ) is used. While in other Arabic-speaking countries other letters are used, such as a varitation of Qāf (ق) known as Gāf (ڨ) in Tunisia and Algeria, and any of the standard letters Jīm (ج), Ghayn (غ), or Qāf (ق) elsewhere.
Variant forms
Kāf with line
The most common form of Gāf (گ) is based on Kāf (ک) with an additional line. It is rarely used in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) itself but is used to represent the sound /ɡ/ when writing other languages.
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