Final Form

In many languages, the final form is a special character used to represent a letter only when it occurs at the end of a word. For example, in Hebrew:

kaf כ, mem מ, nun נ, pe פ, and tsadi צ

have the final forms

kaf ך, mem ם, nun ן, pe ף, and tsadi ץ

Some languages that use final form characters are:

  • Arabic
  • Hebrew
  • Manchu
  • Greek

The lowercase Latin letter "s" had separate medial (ſ) and final (s) in the orthographies of many European languages from the medieval period to the early 19th century; it survived in the German Fraktur script until the 1940s.

This writing system–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Famous quotes containing the words final form, final and/or form:

    Parents can only give [children] good advice or put them on their right paths, but the final forming of a person lies in their own hands.
    Anne Frank (20th century)

    During my administration the most unpleasant and perhaps most dramatic negotiations in which we participated were with the various leaders of Iran after the seizure of American hostages in November 1979. The Algerians were finally chosen as the only intermediaries who were considered trustworthy both by me and the Ayatollah Khomeini. After many aborted efforts, final success was achieved during my last few hours in the White House.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence.
    Henry Fuseli (1741–1825)