Pe is the seventeenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Arabic fāʾ ف‎, Aramaic pē 𐡐, Hebrew pē פ‎, Phoenician pē 𐤐, and Syriac pē ܦ. (in abjadi order). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪐‎, South Arabian 𐩰, and Ge'ez ፈ.

This article contains Ugaritic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Ugaritic alphabet.

The original sound value is a voiceless bilabial plosive /p/ and it retains this value in most Semitic languages, except for Arabic, where the sound /p/ changed into the voiceless labiodental fricative /f/, carrying with it the pronunciation of the letter. However, the sound /p/ in Arabic is used in loanwords with the letter pe as an alternative. Under the Persian influence, many Arabic dialects in the Persian Gulf, as well as in Egypt and in some of the Maghreb under the Ottoman influence uses the letter pe to represent the sound /p/ which is missing in Modern Standard Arabic. Not to be confused with the Turned g. The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Pi (Π), Latin P, Glagolitic Ⱂ,^[1] and Cyrillic П.

Pe is usually assumed to come from a pictogram of a "mouth" (as in Hebrew פֶּה (pe),^[2] Arabic, فا fah).

The letter ف is named فاء fāʾ /faːʔ/. It is written in several ways depending on 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.

Examples on usage in Modern Standard Arabic:

• Fāʾ-fatḥah (فَـ /fa/) is a multi-function prefix most commonly equivalent to "so" or "so that." For example: نَكْتُب naktub ("we write") → فَنَكْتُب fanaktub ("so we write").

Central Asian variant

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In the Arabic orthographies of Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz, the letter fā’ has a descender in the final and isolated positions, much like the Maghrebi version of qāf.^[3][4]

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ڧ‎	ـڧ‎	ـڧـ‎	ڧـ‎

Theoretically this shape could be approximated by using U+06A7 ڧ ARABIC LETTER QAF WITH DOT ABOVE, but in practice U+0641 ف ARABIC LETTER FEH is used in databases of these languages, and most commercial fonts for these languages give the codepoint of the usual Arabic fā’ a shape like ڧ‎.

When the Uyghur keyboard layout for Microsoft Windows was first added in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, the key combination ⇧ Shift+F resulted in U+06A7 ڧ ARABIC LETTER QAF WITH DOT ABOVE.^[5] The Uyghur keyboard layout in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 changed that key combination to give U+0641 ف ARABIC LETTER FEH.^[6] On the newer systems, the old keyboard layout is still available under the name Uyghur (Legacy).

Normally, the letter ف fāʼ renders /f/ sound, but may also be used some names and loanwords where it can render /v/, might be arabized as /f/ in accordance to its spelling, e.g., يُونِيلِفِر (Unilever). It may be used interchangeably with the modified letter ڤ - ve (with 3 dots above) in this case. The letter fāʾ with three dots above is no longer used in Persian, as the [β]-sound changed to [b], e.g. archaic زڤان /zaβɑn/ > زبان /zæbɒn/ 'language'^[7]

The character is mapped in Unicode under position U+06A4.

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER DOTLESS FEH

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH DOT MOVED BELOW 

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH DOT BELOW

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 3 DOTS ABOVE = VEH

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 3 DOTS BELOW = MAGHRIBI VEH

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 4 DOTS ABOVE = PEHEH

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 2 DOTS BELOW

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH 3 DOTS POINTING UPWARDS BELOW

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER FEH WITH DOT BELOW AND THREE DOTS ABOVE

|style="text-align:left"| ARABIC LETTER AFRICAN FEH

The Hebrew spelling is פֵּא. It is also romanized pei or pey, especially when used in Yiddish.^[8][9]

Orthographic variants

position in word	Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
	Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
non final	פ	פ	פ
final	ף	ף	ף

Variations on written form/pronunciation

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Main articles: Modern Hebrew phonology and Hebrew alphabet § Ancient Hebrew

The letter Pe is one of the six letters which can receive a Dagesh Kal. The six are Bet, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, and Tav.

Variant forms of Pe/Fe

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A notable variation on the letter Pe is the Pe Kefulah (Doubled Pe), also known as the Pei Lefufah (Wrapped Pe). The Pe Kefulah is written as a small Pe scribed within a larger Pe. This atypical letter appears in Torah scrolls (most often Yemenite Torahs^[10] but is also present in Sephardic and Ashkenazi Torahs), manuscripts, and some modern printed Hebrew Bibles. When the Pe is written in the form of a Doubled Pe, this adds a layer of deeper meaning to the Biblical text.^[11] This letter variation can appear on the final and non-final forms of the Pe.

There are two orthographic variants of this letter which indicate a different pronunciation:

Name	Symbol	IPA	Transliteration	as in the English word
Pe	פּ‎	/p/	p	pan
Fe	פ‎	/f/	f	fan

Pe with the dagesh

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When the Pe 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.

Fe

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When Pe appears without the dagesh dot in its center (פ), then it usually represents a voiceless labiodental fricative /f/.

Final form of Pe/Fe

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At the end of words, the letter's written form changes to a Pe/Fe Sophit (Final Pe/Fe): ף.

When a word in modern Hebrew borrowed from another language ends with /p/, the non-final form is used (e.g. פִילִיפ /ˈfilip/ "Philip"), while borrowings ending in /f/ still use the Pe Sofit (e.g. כֵּיף /kef/ "fun", from Arabic). This is because native Hebrew words, which always use the final form at the end, cannot end in /p/.