ġayn

The Arabic letter (, or ) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). It represents the sound or . In name and shape, it is a variant of ʻayn (). Its numerical value is 1000 (see Abjad numerals). In Persian, it represents ~ and is the twenty-second letter in the new Persian alphabet.

' is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

History

Proto-Semitic (usually reconstructed as voiced velar fricative or voiced uvular fricative ) merged with ʻayn in most Semitic languages except for Arabic, Ugaritic and older varieties of the Canaanite languages. The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for , . Biblical Hebrew, as of the 3rd century BCE, apparently still distinguished the phonemes and , based on transcriptions in the Septuagint, such as that of the name " Gomorrah" as ''Gomorrha'' () for the Hebrew ''‘Ămōrā'' (). Canaanite languages, including Hebrew, later also merged with ʻayin, and the merger was complete in Tiberian Hebrew.

Usage

The letter () is preferred in the Levant (nowadays), and by Aljazeera TV channel, to represent , e.g., (Hong Kong), (Portugal), ( August), and (Gandalf). Foreign publications and TV channels in Arabic, e.g. Deutsche Welle, and Alhurra, follow this practice. It is then often pronounced , not , though in many cases, is pronounced in loanwords as expected (, not ).

Other letters can be used to transcribe in loanwords and names, depending on whether the local variety of Arabic in the country has the phoneme , and if it does, which letter represents it and whether it is customary in the country to use that letter to transcribe . For instance, in Egypt, where is pronounced as in all situations even in Modern Standard Arabic (except in certain contexts, such as reciting the Qur'an), is used to transcribe foreign in all contexts. The same applies to coastal Yemen, as well as southwestern and eastern Oman. In Algerian Arabic, Hejazi Arabic and Najdi Arabic, it is (). In Iraq, gaf () is more used. In Morocco, ''gāf'' () or ''kāf'' () is used. In Tunisia and Algeria, or is used. In Lebanon, the letter is often used to create the phoneme in foreign loanwords, such as in (Google) or (Georgia).

When representing the sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as or . In English, the letter in Arabic names is usually transliterated as , , or simply ''g'': 'Baghdad', 'Kyrgyzstan', 'Singapore', or ' Gaza', the last of which does not render the sound ~ accurately. The closest equivalent sound to be known to most English-speakers is the Parisian French " r" . The Maltese alphabet is written in the Latin alphabet, the only Semitic language to do so in its standard form, and uses ⟨ g⟩. It is usually represented as voiced velar plosive.

Turkish ğ, which in modern speech has no sound of its own (similar to the soft ''g'' in Danish and the hard and the soft signs in Russian), used to be spelled as غ in the Ottoman script. Other Turkic languages also use this Latin equivalent of ghayn (ğ), such as Tatar (Cyrillic: г), which pronounces it as � In Arabic words and names where there is an ayin, Tatar adds the ghayn instead (عبد الله, ʻ''Abd Allāh, ’Abdullah;'' Tatar: Ğabdulla'','' Габдулла; Yaña imlâ: غابدوللا /ʁabdulla/).

Related characters

For related characters, see ''ng'' (Arabic letter) and ayin.

Character encodings

See also

* Ng (Arabic letter)
*Arabic phonology
*Gaf
*Ayin
* Cyrillic Ghayn, used for several Central Asian languages

References

{{Authority control

Arabic letters
Urdu letters