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This article is about the letter found in some Semitic alphabets. For the Cyrillic letter, see Pe (Cyrillic).
Pe is the seventeenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Pei פ, Persian alphabet Pe پ and Arabic alphabet fāʼ 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.
[edit] Origins of Pe
Pe is usually assumed to come from a pictogram of a mouth (in Hebrew pe; in Arabic, fam). [edit] Hebrew Pei
[edit] 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, Pei, and Tav (see Hebrew Alphabet for more about these letters). There are two orthographic variants of this letter which indicate a different pronunciation:
[edit] Pei with the dageshWhen 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. [edit] 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/. [edit] Final form of Pei/FeiAt the end of words the letter's written form changes to a Pei/Fei Sophit (Final Pei/Fei):
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. [edit] 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. [edit] Arabic fāʼThe 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. Fayʼ-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"). The Maghribi style of writing fa' is different. It is written with a dot underneath like this ڢ . Once the prevalent style, it is now only used in Maghribi countries for writing Qur'an with the exception of Libya which adopted the Mashriqi form.[1]. See also qaf for the Maghribi style of writing that letter. 
[edit] References
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