Arabic letter kaf with dot below

It is a consonant whose value changes by tradition. The Arwi kaf with dot below usually marks Tamil’s k consonant between vowels. Plain Arabic kaf is usual in other positions, though editions vary.

Arwi adapts Arabic script to write Tamil. Tamil-speaking Muslims used it for religious teaching and other writing while keeping Arabic terms legible. Its literary development is documented from the late seventeenth century onward.

The Pegon kaf with dot below represents the voiced g sound in Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and some Indonesian writing. Pegon adapts Arabic script to those languages. It began as word-by-word translation notes beside Arabic religious texts after the 15th century; by the 18th and 19th centuries it also appeared as main-text writing, then in literature, letters, and official religious publishing. A 2022 Unicode proposal shows the letter in a 1958 Pegon book, on a mosque nameplate in Central Java, and in Indonesian Quran publishing. These examples document use by 1958, not when the letter first appeared.

Is Arwi a script or a language?

Arwi writes Tamil in Arabic script; its language status is debated. Most Arabic-Tamil records before the 20th century identified themselves simply as Tamil. A 2017 study describes disagreement: some Tamil nationalists saw Arabic-Tamil as a threat to Tamil unity; some Muslims valued it as a distinct identity, while others considered it too close to Tamil used by non-Muslims. The debate concerns Arwi’s cultural status, not this letter’s sound.