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.

Ve (ڤ) is a letter of the Arabic-based Comoro, Kurdish, Luri, Swahili, and Wakhi alphabets. It is derived from the Arabic letter fāʾ (ف) with two additional dots. It represents the sound /v/ in the aforementioned uses. On the other hand, the letter Pa (ڤ) represents the sound /p/ 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'^[1]

The letter ve is sometimes used in Arabic language to write names and loanwords with the phoneme /v/, such as ڤولڤو (Volvo), ڤيتنام (Vietnam), نوڤمبر (November) and ڤيينا viyenna (Vienna), but rather described, for example, in Egyptian Arabic, it is called fe be talat noʾaṭ (فه بتلات نقط, "Fa' with three dots").

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. In Tunisia and Algeria the variant (ڥ‎) /v/ with three dots below is used instead to differentiate it from the letter (ڨ) /ɡ/. This usage might have been influenced by the Maghrebi archaic variant of fāʼ (ڢ) with a dot below.

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.

See also

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