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.

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Famous quotes containing the words final and/or form:

    Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death, a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves ... and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.
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    Uprises there
    A mother’s form upon my ken,
    Guiding my infant steps, as when
    We walked that ancient, thoroughfare,
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