is a contraction of , ka'asher (when). Arabic kāf The letter is named kāf, and it is written in several ways depending on its position in the word. There are three variants of the letter: the basic form is used for the Arabic language and many other languages: the cross-barred form, notably or , is used predominantly as an alternative form of the version above in all forms of Arabic and in the languages that use the Perso-Arabic script. the long s-shaped variant form, , which is used in Arabic texts and for writing the Qur'an. It has a particular use in the Sindhi language of Pakistan, where it represents the unaspirated /k/, in contrast to the aspirated /kʰ/, which is written using the "normal" kāf (called keheh). In varieties of Arabic kāf is almost universally pronounced as the voiceless velar plosive , but in rural Palestinian and Iraqi, it is pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar affricate . Use in literary Arabic In Literary Arabic, kāf, when used as a prefix , is one of the Arabic words for "like", "as", or "as though" (the other, , is unrelated). For example, (), means "like a bird" or "as though a bird" (as in Hebrew, above) and attached to "this, that" forms the fixed expression "like so, likewise." kāf is used as a possessive suffix for second-person singular nouns (feminine taking , and masculine ); for instance, ("book") becomes ("your book", where the person spoken to is masculine) ("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 ("your book"). In several varieties of vernacular Arabic, however, the kāf with no harakat is the standard second-person possessive, with the literary Arabic harakah shifted to the letter before the kāf: thus masculine "your book" in these varieties is and feminine "your book" . Character encodings See also Ca (Indic) Gaf Ka (Indic) Ngaph References Phoenician alphabet Arabic letters Hebrew letters Letters with final form