Arabic: ڤ is a letter of the Arabic-based Afrikaans, Comorian, Jawi, Kurdish, Pegon, and Wakhi scripts. It is derived from the Arabic letter (Arabic: ف) with two additional dots. It represents the sound pronounced as /link/ and named Ve in the Kurdish, Comorian and Wakhi alphabets, and represents the sound pronounced as /link/ and named Pa in the Jawi (used for Malay) and Pegon (used for Javanese) alphabets.
Ve originated as one of the new letters added for the Perso-Arabic alphabet to write New Persian, and it was used for the sound pronounced as /link/. This letter is no longer used in Persian, as the pronounced as /link/-sound changed to pronounced as /link/, e.g. archaic Persian: زڤان pronounced as //zaβɑn// > Persian: زبان pronounced as //zæbɒn// 'language'[1]
The letter is sometimes used optionally in Arabic to write foreign proper nouns and loanwords with the phoneme pronounced as /link/ instead of using the standard letter Arabic: ف pronounced as /link/, such as Arabic: ڤولڤو (Volvo), Arabic: ڤيتنام (Vietnam), and Arabic: نوڤمبر (November) instead of the standard transcribe Arabic: فولفو, Arabic: فيتنام, and Arabic: نوفمبر. In Egyptian Arabic, it is called فه بتلات نقط (, "Fa' with three dots"). The letter is written Arabic: ڥ in Algeria and Tunisia, with the dots moved underneath to differentiate it from Arabic: ڨ.
The character Arabic: ڤ is mapped in Unicode under position U+06A4.The character Arabic: ڥ is mapped in Unicode under position U+06A5.
In Tunisian and in Algerian, (Arabic: ڨ, looks similar to Arabic: [[ق]] but with three dots) is used for pronounced as /link/, such as in names of places or persons containing a voiced velar stop, as in Gafsa (in Tunisia) or Guelma (in Algeria). If the usage of that letter is not possible for technical restrictions, qāf (Arabic: ق) is often used instead.
In Arabic script representations of the Chechen language, is used to represent the uvular ejective pronounced as /link/, and pronounced as /link/ in Hindko language, in Pakistan, called vaf.