Ve (Arabic letter)

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.^[1]

South African text 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 (MSA) word for *vote* is صوت /sˤawt/

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'^[2]

The letter Ve is sometimes used in various Arabic dialects to write names and loanwords with the phoneme /v/, such as Volvo (ڤولڤو),Vietnam (ڤيتنام), November (نوڤمبر) and Vienna (ڤيينا), but rather described, for example, in Egyptian Arabic, it is called Fāʾ with three dots (Arabic: فه بتلات نقط, lit. 'Fā' be talat noʾaṭ').

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

Ve (ڥ)

The Greek surname Cavafis in Egypt written as كڤافيس (*kavafīs*)

The character Ve (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 /ɡ/ (ڨ). This usage might have been influenced by the Maghrebi archaic variant of Fāʾ (ڢ) with a dot below.^[3]

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ڥ‎	ـڥ‎	ـڥـ‎	ڥـ‎

Gāf (ڨ)

An Algerian sign transcribing Greenwich as ڨرينش (*grīnish*).

Tunisian cookie packaging, showing a three-dotted *qāf* used to represent /g/ in the Arabic transliteration of *Galletes* as ڨالات (*gālāt*).

In Tunisian and in Algerian, Gāf (ڨ), similar look to Qāf (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 (ڨفصة) or Guelma (ڨالمة). If the usage of that letter is not possible for technical restrictions, Qāf (ق) is often used instead.^[4] In Arabic script representations of the Chechen language, Gāf (ڨ‎) is used to represent the uvular ejective /qʼ/, and /v/ in Hindko language (within Pakistan), called Vāf.