Further on the transliteration of Greek loan words and names in Talmudic literature and modern Hebrew: Quf (ק), Kaf (כ), K, C, and Q

I previously examined the usage of the Hebrew letter ש to represent both 'sh' and 's' sounds (pt. 1; pt. 2). It's important to note that classical speakers of Greek and Latin (and much later-- early German), lacked the 'sh' sound, leading to the Anglicized renditions of Hebrew names like Moses and Jesus, originally pronounced as Moshe and Yeshu(a) in Hebrew.

Our focus now shifts to the Hebrew letters Quf (ק) and Kaf (כ). Ultimately, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin all historically stem from the Phoenician alphabet (and were—very roughly speaking—adopted as those alphabets in the 10th-8th centuries BCE). The letters under consideration here have the following subsequent phonetic and historical backgrounds:

1. Quf (ק): This is a letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It is usually transliterated as "Q" or "K" in English. In classical Hebrew, it represents a voiceless uvular stop, similar to the "q" sound in Arabic.

2. Kaf (כ): Also a letter in the Hebrew alphabet, it has two forms: the regular "Kaf" and the final form "Khaf Sofit," which is used at the end of words. When it has a dot in the middle, known as a "dagesh," it is pronounced as a hard "k" sound. Without the dagesh, it is a softer sound, similar to the "ch" in the Scottish "loch."

3. K: This is a letter in the Latin alphabet, used in English and many other languages. It represents a voiceless velar plosive, the same sound as the hard "k" in "kite."

4. C: Another letter in the Latin alphabet, its pronunciation varies significantly between languages. In English, it can represent a "k" sound (as in "cat") or an "s" sound (as in "cent"). However, in languages like Italian and Latin, it is always a hard "k" sound.

5. Q: In the Latin alphabet, "Q" is usually found in the combination "qu," representing a "kw" sound in many languages, including English. However, in some languages like French, it represents just a "k" sound.

Historically, Quf and Kaf represented distinct sounds, a differentiation still evident in Arabic. However, in modern Hebrew, as in classical Greek, Latin, German (including Ashkenazi pronunciation), and all other Indo-European languages, these distinctions don’t exist, with both letters pronounced similarly to the original כ sound.

When transcribing foreign words with the 'K' sound, the technically more correct Hebrew letter to use is כ, not ק. This practice is evident in Talmudic literature, for instance, the word אלכסנדר, and in early modern Hebrew (e.g., לכסיקון for 'lexicon', where the first כ represents the Greek xi, equivalent to Latin X, and the second one represents kappa, equivalent to Latin C, pronounced as 'K'). In contemporary modern Hebrew, quf ( ק) is used instead of kaf ( כ), so that the letter won’t mistakenly be pronounced as ‘kh’ (as indeed ended up happening with loan words like אכסניה, likely properly pronounced axenia--from Greek xenia meaning ‘hospitality’--traditionally pronounced akhsania.)¹

For additional examples of X being transliterated as כס, refer to my previous piece "Waves from the West: Uncovering some Greco-Roman Undercurrents in the Sea of Talmud".

1. Similar analyses, which I won’t get into here, are relevant to the Latin letters K, C, and Q which, as mentioned, historically descend from the same Phoenician letters as the Hebrew ק and כ.