Contents
Gimel
Gimel is the third (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order) letter of the Semitic abjads, including Arabic ǧīm, Aramaic gāmal 𐡂, Hebrew gīmel , Phoenician gīml 𐤂, and Syriac gāmal ܓ. Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, except Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive. In Modern Standard Arabic, it represents either a or for most Arabic speakers except in Northern Egypt, the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of Oman where it is pronounced as the voiced velar plosive (see below). In its Proto-Canaanite form, the letter may have been named after a weapon that was either a staff sling or a throwing stick (spear thrower), ultimately deriving from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on the hieroglyph below: The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek gamma (Γ), the Latin C, G, Ɣ and Ȝ, and the Cyrillic Г, Ґ, and Ғ.
Arabic ǧīm
The Arabic letter ج is named جيم ǧīm / jīm . It has four forms, and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: The similarity to ḥāʼ ح is likely a function of the original Syriac forms converging to a single symbol, requiring that one of them be distinguished as a dot; a similar process occurred to zāy and rāʾ.
Pronunciation
In all varieties of Arabic, cognate words will have consistent differences in pronunciation of the letter. The standard pronunciation taught outside the Arabic speaking world is an affricate, which was the agreed-upon pronunciation by the end of the nineteenth century to recite the Qur'an. It is pronounced as a fricative in most of Northern Africa and the Levant, and is the prestigious and most common pronunciation in Egypt, which is also found in Southern Arabian Peninsula. Differences in pronunciation occur because readers of Modern Standard Arabic pronounce words following their native dialects. For most speakes the standard pronunciation of the letter in literary (MSA) and everday colloquial speech are the same ( or ) except for speakers in parts of Yemen and Oman where ج is or when speaking Modern Standard Arabic but in their everday dialectal speech. Another exception is Egypt, where in the Cairene (Egyptian) Arabic both colloquial and literary the ج jīm is realized as a velar plosive, but as when reciting the Qur’an. However, ج (also written چ) may be used in Egypt to transcribe /~ (normally pronounced ) in loanwords, for example جيبة or چيبة “skirt” from French “jupe”.
Historical pronunciation
While in most Semitic languages, e.g. Aramaic, Hebrew, Ge'ez, Old South Arabian the equivalent letter represents a, Arabic is considered unique among them where the Jīm ⟨ج⟩ was palatalized to an affricate or a fricative in most dialects from classical times. While there is variation in Modern Arabic varieties, most of them reflect this palatalized pronunciation except in coastal Yemeni and Omani dialects as well as in Egypt, where it is pronounced. It is not well known when palatalization occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Qāf ⟨ق⟩ as a, but in most of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and parts of Yemen and Oman), the ⟨ج⟩ represents a and ⟨ق⟩ represents a , except in coastal Yemen and southern Oman where ⟨ج⟩ represents a and ⟨ق⟩ represents a , which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of ⟨ج⟩ to and the pronunciation of the ⟨ق⟩ as a as shown in the table below:
Pronunciation across other languages
Note: In Kazakh ⟨ج⟩ is pronounced in some dialects, such as in the south and east.
Variant
A variant letter named che is used in Persian, with three dots below instead having just one dot below. However, it is not included on one of the 28 letters on the Arabic alphabet. It is thus written as:
Hebrew gimel
Variations
Hebrew spelling: גִּימֶל Bertrand Russell posits that the letter's form is a conventionalized image of a camel. The letter may be the shape of the walking animal's head, neck, and forelegs. Barry B. Powell, a specialist in the history of writing, states “It is hard to imagine how gimel = ‘camel’ can be derived from the picture of a camel (it may show his hump, or his head and neck!)”. Gimel is one of the six letters which can receive a dagesh qal. The two functions of dagesh are distinguished as either qal (light) or hazaq (strong). The six letters that can receive a dagesh qal are bet, gimel, daled, kaph, pe, and taf. Three of them (bet, kaph, and pe) have their sound value changed in modern Hebrew from the fricative to the plosive by adding a dagesh. The other three represent the same pronunciation in modern Hebrew, but have had alternate pronunciations at other times and places. They are essentially pronounced in the fricative as ג gh غ, dh ذ and th ث. In the Temani pronunciation, gimel represents, , or when with a dagesh, and without a dagesh. In**** modern**** Hebrew****,**** the combination **** (gimel**** followed**** by**** a geresh****)**** is**** used**** in**** loanwords and foreign names to**** denote****.****
Significance
In gematria, gimel represents the number three. It is written like a vav with a yud as a "foot", and is traditionally believed to resemble a person in motion; symbolically, a rich man running after a poor man to give him charity. In the Hebrew alphabet gimel directly precedes dalet, which signifies a poor or lowly man, given its similarity to the Hebrew word dal (b. Shabbat, 104a). Gimel is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns (called tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See shin, ayin, teth, nun, zayin, and tsadi. The letter gimel is the electoral symbol for the United Torah Judaism party, and the party is often nicknamed Gimmel. In Modern Hebrew, the frequency of usage of gimel, out of all the letters, is 1.26%.
Syriac gamal/gomal
In the Syriac alphabet, the third letter is ܓ — Gamal in eastern pronunciation, Gomal in western pronunciation (ܓܵܡܵܠ). It is one of six letters that represent two associated sounds (the others are Bet, Dalet, Kaph, Pe and Taw). When Gamal/Gomal has a hard pronunciation (qûššāyâ ) it represents, like "goat". When Gamal/Gomal has a soft pronunciation (rûkkāḵâ ) it traditionally represents (ܓ݂ܵܡܵܠ), or Ghamal/Ghomal. The letter, renamed Jamal/Jomal, is written with a tilde/tie either below or within it to represent the borrowed phoneme (ܓ̰ܡܵܠ), which is used in Garshuni and some Neo-Aramaic languages to write loan and foreign words from Arabic or Persian.
Other uses
Mathematics
The serif form \gimel of the Hebrew letter gimel is occasionally used for the gimel function in mathematics.
Character encodings
This article is derived from Wikipedia and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. View the original article.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Bliptext is not
affiliated with or endorsed by Wikipedia or the
Wikimedia Foundation.