Ǧīm

Gimel is the third (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order) letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''gīml'' 𐤂, Hebrew ''gīmel'' , Aramaic ''gāmal'' 𐡂, Syriac ''gāmal'' ܓ and Arabic ''ǧīm'' . It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪔‎, South Arabian , and Ge'ez .

Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, except Arabic ( see below), 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 .

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:

T14

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 is named ' / '
. It has four forms, and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

The similarity to '   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 and .

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.

Egyptians always use the letter to represent as well as in names and loanwords, such as "golf". However, may be used in Egypt to transcribe ~ (normally pronounced ) or if there is a need to distinguish them completely, then is used to represent , which is also a proposal for Mehri and Soqotri languages.

;The literary standard pronunciations:
*: In most of the Arabian Peninsula, parts of Algeria ( Algiers dialect), Iraq, parts of Egypt, parts of the Levant. This is also the commonly taught pronunciation outside the Arabic speaking countries when Literary Arabic is taught as a foreign language. It is the agreed-upon pronunciation to recite the Qur'an and it also corresponds to in Maltese (a Semitic language derived from Sicilian Arabic) as in ''ġar'' ''(neighbor)'' and Arabic ''(neighbor)'' both pronounced .
*: In the Levant (especially in the urban centers), Southern Iraqi Arabic, most of the Maghreb, and parts of Algeria (Oran dialect), and by some speakers in western Saudi Arabia (Hejaz).
*: In Egypt, coastal Yemen ( West and South), southwestern and eastern Oman.
*: In Sudan, parts of Saudi Arabia, and hinterland Yemen.

;Non-literary pronunciation
*: In eastern Arabian Peninsula in the most colloquial speech, though sometimes or in Literary Arabic loan words.
*: In eastern Arabian Peninsula and Iraq but only colloquial speech, for example Kuwaiti Arabic “a lot” vs. Najdi Arabic .
*: attested among some bedouin dialects in Saudi Arabia.

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'' 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'' as a , but in most of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and parts of Yemen and Oman), the represents a and represents a , except in coastal Yemen and southern Oman where represents a and represents a , which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of to and the pronunciation of the as a as shown in the table below:

Pronunciation across other languages

Note: In Kazakh is pronounced in some dialects, such as in the south and east. Hausa is pronounced , in the Hausa of Niger, is usually pronounced .

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:

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 — Gamal in eastern pronunciation, Gomal in western pronunciation (). 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 (), or ''Ghamal/Ghomal''. The letter, renamed ''Jamal/Jomal'', is written with a tilde/tie either below or within it to represent the borrowed phoneme (), 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

References

External links

The Mystical Significance of the Hebrew Letters: Gimel

{{Northwest Semitic abjad

Phoenician alphabet
Arabic letters
Hebrew letters
Urdu letters