Aramaic Letters: Kap

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The next letter of the Aramaic Alphabet is called Kap, pronounced similar to the word cap, as in baseball cap. It corresponds to the Hebrew letter Kaf in the Hebrew Alphabet. The letters in the Aramaic Alphabet are almost identical to those in Hebrew, but have slightly different names and sometimes slightly different sounds.

  Aramaic audio: Listen to the sound of Kap.

Here is what the Aramaic letter Kap looks like:

 
Kap is one of the Aramaic letters which has two pronunciations, depending on whether it has the dot, or Dagesh, inside it. If it has a dot, it is pronounced with a hard k sound, like the words Chronicles, calf or kill. If there is no dot, it is pronounced ch like the Scottish word loch or the German Bach (but never, ever ch as in words like chat or charm).

Here are the two versions of Kap:

  with the dot, pronounced k

  without the dot, pronounced ch

 
There is one other important thing about the Aramaic letter Kap. Five of the letters in the Aramaic Alphabet, including Kap, have a special form when they occur at the end of an Aramaic word. If these letters occur at the start or in the middle of an Aramaic word, then nothing special happens - but if they occur at the end, then the special form must be used instead. You will be told which Aramaic letters have this special form when you get to them.

Here, then, is the special form of the Aramaic letter Kap when it occurs at the end of a word:

  the form of Kap at the end of a word

When Kap occurs at the end of a word in Aramaic, it is always pronounced with the harder sound, k. This is the opposite to Hebrew, where the Hebrew letter Kaf always has a soft sound when it occurs at the end of a Hebrew word.

Here is how to write Kap:



Both the normal and final forms of Kap both have the Gematria (numerical value) of 20.

Practise writing the two versions of Kap in the grid lines below:









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