Ayin Ismael
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''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth
letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
of the
Semitic scripts Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...
, including Phoenician ,
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
,
Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
,
Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
ܥ, and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
(where it is sixteenth in
abjadi order The Abjad numerals, also called Hisab al-Jummal ( ar, حِسَاب ٱلْجُمَّل, ), are a decimal alphabetic numeral system/alphanumeric code, in which the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are assigned numerical values. They have been us ...
only). The letter represents a
voiced pharyngeal fricative The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglotta ...
() or a similarly articulated consonant. In some Semitic languages and dialects, the phonetic value of the letter has changed, or the phoneme has been lost altogether (thus, in the revived
Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
it is reduced to a
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
or is omitted entirely in part due to European influence). The Phoenician letter is the origin of the Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letter O, O and O. It is the origin of letter Ƹ.


Origins

The letter name is derived from
Proto-Semitic Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic ''Urheimat''; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant (m ...
"eye", and the Phoenician letter had the shape of a circle or oval, clearly representing an eye, perhaps ultimately (via Proto-Sinaitic) derived from the ''ı͗r''
hieroglyph A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatoni ...
( Gardiner D4). The Phoenician letter gave rise to the
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
Ο, Latin O, and
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
О, all representing vowels. The sound represented by ayin is common to much of the
Afroasiatic language family The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
, such as in the
Egyptian language The Egyptian language or Ancient Egyptian ( ) is a dead language, dead Afroasiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic language that was spoken in ancient Egypt. It is known today from a large Text corpus, corpus of surviving texts which were made acces ...
, the
Cushitic languages The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As ...
and the
Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...
.


Transliteration

In Semitic philology, there is a long-standing tradition of rendering Semitic ayin with the Greek
rough breathing In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma or ''daseîa''; la, spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, d ...
mark (e.g.
Arabs The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Wester ...
). Depending on typography, this could look similar to either an articulate single opening
quotation mark Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...
(e.g. ). or as a raised semi-circle open to the right (e.g. ). This is by analogy to the transliteration of
alef Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These letter ...
(
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
,
hamza Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from ...
) by the Greek
smooth breathing The smooth breathing ( grc, ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, psilòn pneûma; ell, ψιλή ''psilí''; la, spīritus lēnis) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In Ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal frica ...
mark , rendered as single closing quotation mark or as raised semi-circle open to the left. This convention has been adopted by DIN in 1982 and by ISO in 1984 for Arabic (
DIN 31635 DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) as modified by the International Orientalist ...
,
ISO 233 The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for romanization of Arabic and Syriac. It was supplemented by ISO 233-2 in 1993. 1984 edition The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language. ISO 233-2:1993 ISO 233-2: ...
) and Hebrew (
DIN 31636 DIN 31636 is the German standard for the Romanization of Hebrew. {, class="wikitable" , + DIN 31636 ! Hebrew , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ...
,
ISO 259 ISO 259 is a series of international standards for the romanization of Hebrew characters into Latin characters, dating to 1984, with updated ISO 259-2 (a simplification, disregarding several vowel signs, 1994) and ISO 259-3 (Phonemic Conversion, 1 ...
). The shape of the "raised semi-circle" for ayin and alef was adopted by the ''
Encyclopedia of Islam The ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' (''EI'') is an encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies published by Brill. It is considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies. The first edition was published in ...
'' (edited 1913–1938, 1954–2005, and from 2007), and from there by the ''
International Journal of Middle East Studies The ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'' is a scholarly journal published by the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), a learned society. See also * Middle East Research and Information Project * Association for th ...
''. This convention has since also been followed by ISO ( ISO 233-2 and
ISO 259-2 ISO 259 is a series of international standards for the romanization of Hebrew characters into Latin characters, dating to 1984, with updated ISO 259-2 (a simplification, disregarding several vowel signs, 1994) and ISO 259-3 (Phonemic Conversion, 1 ...
, 1993/4) and by DIN. A notable exception remains,
ALA-LC ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script. Applications The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...
(1991), the system used by the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
, continues to recommend modifier letter turned comma (for Hebrew) or left single quotation mark (for Arabic). The symbols for the corresponding phonemes in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
, for
pharyngeal fricative A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, ...
(ayin) and for
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
(alef) were adopted in the 1928 revision. In anglicized Arabic or Hebrew names or in loanwords, ayin is often omitted entirely:
Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
,
Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
, Saudi , etc.;
Afula Afula ( he, עפולה Arabic: العفولة) is a city in the Northern District of Israel, often known as the "Capital of the Valley" due to its strategic location in the Jezreel Valley. As of , the city had a population of . Afula's ancient ...
, Arad , etc. In Arabic, the presence of ayin in front of ''u'' can sometimes be inferred even if it is not rendered separately, as the vowel quality is shifted towards ''o'' (e.g.
Oman Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of t ...
,
Omar ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb ( ar, عمر بن الخطاب, also spelled Omar, ) was the second Rashidun caliph, ruling from August 634 until his assassination in 644. He succeeded Abu Bakr () as the second caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate o ...
, etc.) Maltese, which uses a Latin alphabet, the only Semitic language to do so in its
standard form Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ...
, writes the ayin as . It is usually unvocalized in speech. The
Somali Latin alphabet The Somali Latin alphabet is an official writing script in the Federal Republic of Somalia and its constituent Federal Member States. It was developed by a number of leading scholars of Somali, including Musa Haji Ismail Galal, B. W. Andrzeje ...
represents the ayin with the letter . The informal way to represent it in
Arabic chat alphabet The Arabic chat alphabet, ''Arabizi'', Franco-Arabic (), refer to the Romanized alphabets for informal Arabic dialects in which Arabic script is transcribed or encoded into a combination of Latin script and Arabic numerals. These informal chat ...
uses the digit as transliteration.


Unicode

In
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
, the recommended character for the transliteration of ayin is (a character in the
Spacing Modifier Letters Spacing Modifier Letters is a Unicode block containing characters for the IPA, UPA, and other phonetic transcriptions. Included are the IPA tone marks, and modifiers for aspiration and palatalization. The word ''spacing'' indicates that these ...
range, even though it is here not used as a modifier letter but as a full grapheme). This convention has been adopted by ISO 233-2 (1993) for Arabic and
ISO 259-2 ISO 259 is a series of international standards for the romanization of Hebrew characters into Latin characters, dating to 1984, with updated ISO 259-2 (a simplification, disregarding several vowel signs, 1994) and ISO 259-3 (Phonemic Conversion, 1 ...
(1994) for Hebrew. There are a number of alternative Unicode characters in use, some of which are easily confused or even considered equivalent in practice: * , the character used to represent Greek
rough breathing In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma or ''daseîa''; la, spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, d ...
, * , * , * , * , from its use as single opening quotation mark in
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
environments, used for ayin in
ArabTeX ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pash ...
. Other variants chosen to represent ayin as a full grapheme (rather than a sign suggestive of an apostrophe or a diacritic): * a superscript "c" (c or ), * the
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...
symbol for
pharyngealization Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicated ...
( or ) or ʕ, a superscript , the IPA symbol for
voiced pharyngeal fricative The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglotta ...
, *
Phonetic Extensions Phonetic Extensions is a Unicode block containing phonetic characters used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Old Irish phonetic notation, the Oxford English dictionary and American dictionaries, and Americanist and Russianist phonetic notations. ...
contains and , letters used in
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...
for
Sámi languages Sámi languages ( ), in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, dependin ...
. It is worth noting that the phonemes corresponding to alef and ayin in Ancient Egyptian are by convention
transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...
by more distinctive signs:
Egyptian alef Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician , Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew , Aramaic language, Aramaic , Syriac alphabet, Syriac , Arabic alpha ...
is rendered by ''two'' semi-circles open to the left, stacked vertically, and Egyptian ayin is rendered by a single full-width semi-circle open to the right. These characters were introduced in Unicode in version 5.1 (2008,
Latin Extended-D Latin Extended-D is a Unicode block containing Latin characters for phonetic, Mayanist, and Medieval transcription and notation systems. 89 of the characters in this block are for medieval characters proposed by the Medieval Unicode Font Initiati ...
range), and .


Hebrew ayin

Hebrew spelling: ʿayin, along with
Aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These letter ...
,
Resh Resh is the twentieth Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician Rēsh , Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew Rēsh , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic Rēsh , Syriac alphabet, Syriac Rēsh ܪ, and Arabic script, Arabic ...
, He and
Heth Heth, sometimes written Chet, but more accurately Ḥet, is the eighth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ḥēt 𐤇 , Hebrew Ḥēth , Aramaic Ḥēth , Syriac Ḥēṯ ܚ, Arabic Ḥā' , and Maltese Ħ, ħ. Heth originall ...
, cannot receive a
dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of mod ...
.


Phonetic representation

ʿayin has traditionally been described as a
voiced pharyngeal fricative The voiced pharyngeal approximant or fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ?\. Epiglotta ...
(). However, this may be imprecise. Although a pharyngeal fricative has occasionally been observed for ʿayin in Arabic and so may occur in Hebrew as well, the sound is more commonly
epiglottal A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, ...
(),Ladefoged, Peter & Ian Maddieson (1996). ''The sounds of the world's languages''. Oxford: Blackwells. and may also be a
pharyngealized Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can be indicated ...
glottal stop (). In some historical Sephardi and Ashkenazi pronunciations, ʿayin represented a
velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...
(). Remnants can be found in the Yiddish pronunciations of some words such as /ˈjaŋkəv/ and /ˈmansə/ from Hebrew (''yaʿăqōḇ'', "Jacob") and (''maʿăse'', "story"), but in other cases, the nasal has disappeared and been replaced by /j/, such as /ˈmajsə/ and /ˈmajrəv/ from Hebrew and (''maʿărāḇ'', "west"). In Israeli Hebrew (except for Mizrahi pronunciations), it represents a glottal stop in certain cases but is usually silent (it behaves the same as
aleph Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez . These letter ...
). However, changes in adjoining vowels often testify to the former presence of a pharyngeal or epiglottal articulation. Additionally, it may be used as a
shibboleth A shibboleth (; hbo, , šībbōleṯ) is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwor ...
to identify the
ethnolinguistic Ethnolinguistics (sometimes called cultural linguistics) is an area of anthropological linguistics that studies the relationship between a language and the nonlinguistic cultural behavior of the people who speak that language. __NOTOC__ Examples ...
background of a Hebrew-speaker, as most
Israeli Arab The Arab citizens of Israel are the largest ethnic minority in the country. They comprise a hybrid community of Israeli citizens with a heritage of Palestinian citizenship, mixed religions (Muslim, Christian or Druze), bilingual in Arabic an ...
non-Jews and some of Israel’s
Mizrahi Jews Mizrahi Jews ( he, יהודי המִזְרָח), also known as ''Mizrahim'' () or ''Mizrachi'' () and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or ''Edot HaMizrach'' (, ), are a grouping of Jewish communities comprising those who remained i ...
(mainly
Yemenite Jews Yemenite Jews or Yemeni Jews or Teimanim (from ''Yehudei Teman''; ar, اليهود اليمنيون) are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the ...
) use the more traditional pronunciation, while other Hebrew-speakers pronounce it similar to Aleph. Ayin is also one of the three letters that can take a furtive
patach Pataḥ ( he, פַּתָּח ', , Biblical Hebrew: ') is a Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by a horizontal line underneath a letter. In modern Hebrew, it indicates the phoneme which is close to the " sound in the Engl ...
(). In Hebrew loanwords in Greek and Latin, ʿayin is sometimes reflected as /g/, since the biblical phonemes (or "ʿ") and (represented by "g") were both represented in Hebrew writing by the letter ʿayin (see Ġain). Gomorrah is from the original (modern ''ʿAmora'') and Gaza from the original (''ʿaza'') (cf. Arabic غزة Ġazzah, IPA: ɣazza) In Yiddish, the ʿayin is used to write the vowel e when it is not part of the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
''ey''.


Significance

In
gematria Gematria (; he, גמטריא or gimatria , plural or , ''gimatriot'') is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase according to an alphanumerical cipher. A single word can yield several values depending on the cipher ...
, ʿayin represents the number 70. ʿayin is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns (called '' tagin'') when written in a
sefer Torah A ( he, סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה; "Book of Torah"; plural: ) or Torah scroll is a handwritten copy of the Torah, meaning the five books of Moses (the first books of the Hebrew Bible). The Torah scroll is mainly used in the ritual of Tora ...
.


Arabic ʿayn

The Arabic letter (called ) is the eighteenth letter of the
alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
. It is written in one of several ways depending on its position in the word:


Pronunciation

Arabic ʿayn is one of the most common letters in Arabic. Depending on the region, it ranges from a pharyngeal to an
epiglottal A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, ...
. It is
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...
, its unvoiced counterpart being . Due to its position as the innermost letter to emerge from the throat,
al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi Abu ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Amr ibn Tammām al-Farāhīdī al-Azdī al-Yaḥmadī ( ar, أبو عبدالرحمن الخليل بن أحمد الفراهيدي; 718 – 786 CE), known as Al-Farāhīdī, or Al-Khalīl, ...
, who wrote the first Arabic dictionary, actually started writing with as the first letter instead of the eighteenth; he viewed its origins deep down in the throat as a sign that it was the first sound, the essential sound, the voice and a representation of the self.Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, ''The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual'', pg. 178. Cornell Studies in Political Economy.
Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named a ...
:
Cornell University Press The Cornell University Press is the university press of Cornell University; currently housed in Sage House, the former residence of Henry William Sage. It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in th ...
, 1993.
In the Persian language and other languages using the Persian alphabet, it is pronounced as (glottal stop), and rarely as in some languages. As in Hebrew, the letter originally stood for two sounds, and . When pointing was developed, the sound was distinguished with a dot on top (), to give the letter ''ghayn''. In Maltese, which is written with the Latin alphabet, the digraph , called ''ʿajn'', is used to write what was originally the same sound. Because the sound is difficult for most non-Arabs to pronounce, it is often used as a
shibboleth A shibboleth (; hbo, , šībbōleṯ) is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwor ...
by Arabic speakers; other sounds, such as and are also used.


Character encodings


See also

*
Transliteration of Ancient Egyptian As used for Egyptology, transliteration of Ancient Egyptian is the process of converting (or mapping) texts written as Egyptian language symbols to alphabetic symbols representing uniliteral Egyptian hieroglyphs, hieroglyphs or their hieratic and D ...


Notes


References


External links

* {{Northwest Semitic abjad Phoenician alphabet Arabic letters Hebrew letters