qaaf قاف

The qaaf قاف ق (Q) is a kind of K-sound, resembling the kaaf كاف ك (K). The difference all lies in the position of the back of the tongue: it's up and forward for K, down and back for Q.

That's not a difficult movement, the hard part is not forgetting about it. The English letters K, C and Q can all take different tongue-positions and that doesn't matter.

In Arabic, tongue position matters a lot. If you tell your Arab girlfriend #anti qalbiy أنت قلبي "you're my heart", and by mistake you raise the tongue at the q ق, that turns into #anti kalbiy أنت كلبي "you're my dog".

The good news is that the spelling is straightforward: tongue up write ق, tongue down write ك. You won't have to put up with that C/K/CK/Q stuff that European languages love so much.

The tongue-position of English "key" is exactly like that of Arabic kaaf كاف ك. To say Arabic qaaf قاف, lower the back of the tongue and move it as far back as possible, until it touches that thingy which dangles in the back of the throat (forgive my poor English, but I can't remember now how what do you guys call the uvula).

Moving the tongue like taht is easy enough. The hard part is learning to tell by ear which tongue-position other people are using. The Q is a dark letter, unlike the K. Buy the nearest Arab a drink (maybe a non-alcoholic one) and ask him to say the six words

kall كل, kill كل, kull كل,
qall قل, qill قل, qull قل.

You won't hear any difference at all between the Ks of the first three and the Qs of the last three: don't worry, that's normal, because your ear is programmed to hear every sound made with the back of the tongue as an English K, no matter whether it's up or down. But you'll hear a clear difference in the vowels: kall كل sounds like "Kell" while qall قل is more like "koll".

So, try to imitate the exact vowel sound you heard, while trying to put the back of the tongue in different places. You'll have got it when the Arab says so.

Unlike the ك, aspirating the ق is OK. Some Arabic dialects do this and others don't.

A few dialects pronounce this letter exactly like the G in "go grab the grapes". Speakers of those dialects will understand you perfectly if you use the good pronunciation, and conversely, so you are free to choose, but everybody will tell you that the "qalb" is best, even those who always say "galb".

Drawing the qaaf قاف

Draw the head of a faa# فاء, the tail of a nuwn نون, and two dots on top of the head.

The tail should be a little longer than a noon's tail, so it encloses one square and a half, not just one.

Middle qaaf قاف

When the qaaf is between two other letters, it usually becomes a faa# فاء's loop, just with two dots above instead of one. You may draw it as a faa# فاء's head anyway, but to do that you'll have to lift the pencil from the paper, and that looks childish.

Copyright (c) 2001-2009 Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/net/arabe/q.en.html
Last revised: 2008-03-31

kaaf كاف

Alphabet Table

writing_arabic -> alphabet -> qaaf