Gimel is the third (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order) letter of the Semitic abjads , including Arabic ǧīm ج , Aramaic gāmal 𐡂, Hebrew gīmel ג , 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 [ ɡ ] . In Modern Standard Arabic , it represents either a /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/ 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 [ ɡ ] ( see below ).
27-652: 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 . The Arabic letter ج is named جيم ǧīm / jīm [d͡ʒiːm, ʒiːm, ɡiːm, ɟiːm] . It has four forms, and
54-447: A [ ɡ ] , except in coastal Yemen and southern Oman where ⟨ ج ⟩ represents a [ ɡ ] and ⟨ ق ⟩ represents a [ q ] , which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of ⟨ ج ⟩ to [ d͡ʒ ] and the pronunciation of the ⟨ ق ⟩ as a [ ɡ ] as shown in the table below: Notes: Note: In Kazakh ⟨ ج ⟩
81-411: 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
108-630: A hard pronunciation ( qûššāyâ ) it represents [ ɡ ] , like " g oat". When Gamal/Gomal has a soft pronunciation ( rûkkāḵâ ) it traditionally represents [ ɣ ] ( 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 [ d͡ʒ ] ( ܓ̰ܡܵܠ ), which is used in Garshuni and some Neo-Aramaic languages to write loan and foreign words from Arabic or Persian. The serif form ℷ {\displaystyle \gimel } of
135-574: 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
162-497: A reflex of ⟨ ق ⟩ or less commonly of ⟨ ج ⟩ . It seems that [ɡ] is somewhat more difficult to articulate than the other basic stops. Ian Maddieson speculates that this may be due to a physical difficulty in voicing velars: Voicing requires that air flow into the mouth cavity, and the relatively small space allowed by the position of velar consonants means that it will fill up with air quickly, making voicing difficult to maintain in [ɡ] for as long as it
189-654: Is Egypt, where in the Cairene ( Egyptian ) Arabic both colloquial and literary the ج jīm is realized as a velar plosive [ ɡ ] , but as [ d͡ʒ ] when reciting the Qur’an. However, ج (also written چ ) may be used in Egypt to transcribe / d͡ʒ ~ ʒ / (normally pronounced [ ʒ ] ) in loanwords, for example جيبة or چيبة [ ʒiːba ] “skirt” from French “jupe”. While in most Semitic languages, e.g. Aramaic , Hebrew , Ge'ez , Old South Arabian
216-455: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Voiced velar plosive The voiced velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages . Some languages have the voiced pre-velar plosive , which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical velar plosive, though not as front as the prototypical palatal plosive . Conversely, some languages have
243-620: 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 ( [ d͡ʒ ] or [ ʒ ] ) except for speakers in parts of Yemen and Oman where ج is [ d͡ʒ ] or [ ɟ ] when speaking Modern Standard Arabic but [ g ] in their everday dialectal speech. Another exception
270-517: Is in [d] or [b] . This could have two effects: [ɡ] and [k] might become confused, and the distinction is lost, or perhaps a [ɡ] never develops when a language first starts making voicing distinctions. With uvulars, where there is even less space between the glottis and tongue for airflow, the imbalance is more extreme: Voiced [ɢ] is much rarer than voiceless [q] . In many Indo-Aryan languages , such as Hindustani , plain [g] and aspirated [g ] are in contrastive distribution . Symbols to
297-466: Is pronounced [ g ] . It is not well known when palatalization occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Qāf ⟨ ق ⟩ as a [ ɡ ] , but in most of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and parts of Yemen and Oman), the ⟨ ج ⟩ represents a [ d͡ʒ ] and ⟨ ق ⟩ represents
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#1732786976598324-532: Is pronounced / d͡ʒ / in some dialects, such as in the south and east. 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 spelling: גִּימֶל Bertrand Russell posits that the letter's form is a conventionalized image of a camel. The letter may be
351-618: Is the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon , a 15-by-16.5-centimetre (5.9 in × 6.5 in) ostracon believed to be the longest Proto-Canaanite inscription ever found. Other inscriptions include the Lachish Dagger , Gezer Sherd , Schechem Plaque , Nagila Sherd , Izbet Sartah Ostracon , Raddana Handle , Revadim Seal , El-Khadr Arrowheads 1-5, and the Ahiram Sarcophagus . This Semitic languages -related article
378-605: 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%. [REDACTED] 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
405-403: 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 . In all varieties of Arabic , cognate words will have consistent differences in pronunciation of
432-629: The About 20-25 proto-Canaanite inscriptions are known. Proto-Canaanite , also referred to as Proto-Canaan, Old Canaanite, or Canaanite, is the name given to either a script ancestral to the Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew script with undefined affinity to Proto-Sinaitic, or to the Proto-Sinaitic script ( c. 16th century BC ), when found in Canaan. While no extant inscription in
459-635: The Ophel pithos , was found in 2012 on a pottery storage jar during the excavations of the south wall of the Temple Mount by Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar in Jerusalem. Inscribed on the pot are some big letters about an inch high, of which only five are complete, and traces of perhaps three additional letters written in Proto-Canaanite script. Another possible Proto-Canaanite inscription
486-471: The Temani pronunciation, gimel represents /ɡ/ , /ʒ/ , or /d͡ʒ/ when with a dagesh, and /ɣ/ without a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the combination ג׳ (gimel followed by a geresh ) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote [ d͡ʒ ] . 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
513-554: The voiced post-velar plosive , which is articulated slightly behind the place of articulation of the prototypical velar plosive, though not as back as the prototypical uvular plosive . The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ ɡ ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is g . Strictly, the IPA symbol is the so-called single-storey G [REDACTED] , but
540-400: The Hebrew letter gimel is occasionally used for the gimel function in mathematics. ʾ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ʿ p ṣ q r š t Proto-Canaanite Proto-Canaanite is the name given to
567-513: The Phoenician alphabet is older than c. 1050 BC, Proto-Canaanite is used for the early alphabets as used during the 13th and 12th centuries BC in Phoenicia . However, the Phoenician , Hebrew , and other Canaanite dialects were largely indistinguishable before the 11th century BC, and the writing system is essentially identical. A possible example of Proto-Canaanite, the inscription on
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#1732786976598594-527: The double-storey G [REDACTED] is considered an acceptable alternative. The Unicode character U+0067 g LATIN SMALL LETTER G renders as either a single-storey G or a double-storey G depending on font; the character U+0261 ɡ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT G is always a single-storey G, but it is generally available only in fonts with the IPA Extensions Unicode character block. [REDACTED] Features of
621-544: The equivalent letter represents a [ ɡ ] , Arabic is considered unique among them where the Jīm ⟨ ج ⟩ was palatalized to an affricate [ d͡ʒ ] or a fricative [ ʒ ] 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
648-550: The letter. The standard pronunciation taught outside the Arabic speaking world is an affricate [ d͡ʒ ] , which was the agreed-upon pronunciation by the end of the nineteenth century to recite the Qur'an . It is pronounced as a fricative [ ʒ ] in most of Northern Africa and the Levant , and [ ɡ ] is the prestigious and most common pronunciation in Egypt , which
675-465: The other hand, is widely scattered around the world, for example /ɡ/ is not a native phoneme of Belarusian, Dutch, Czech, or Slovak and occurs only in borrowed words in those languages. A few languages, such as Modern Standard Arabic and part of the Levantine dialects (e.g. Lebanese and Syrian ), are missing both, although most Modern Arabic dialects have /ɡ/ in their native phonemic systems as
702-447: 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
729-443: The voiced velar stop: Of the six stops that would be expected from the most common pattern worldwide—that is, three places of articulation plus voicing ( [p b, t d, k ɡ] )— [p] and [ɡ] are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern. Absent stop [p] is an areal feature (see also Voiceless bilabial stop ). Missing [ɡ] , (when the language uses voicing to contrast stops) on
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