gimel (letter)

Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml , Hebrew Gimel , Aramaic Gāmal , Syriac Gāmal , and Arabic (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order). 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:

T14

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek gamma (Γ), the Latin C, G, Ɣ and yogh , and the Cyrillic Г and Ґ.

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, from the Hebrew word ''dal'' (b. ''Shabbat'', 104a).

The word ''gimel'' is related to ''gemul'', which means 'justified repayment', or the giving of reward and punishment.

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.

Arabic ǧīm

The Arabic letter is named ' . It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

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, Algeria, Iraq, Levant. This is also the commonly taught pronunciation outside the Arabic speaking countries when Literary Arabic is taught as a foreign language.
*: In the Levant, Southern Iraqi Arabic and Northwestern Africa.
*: In Egypt, coastal Yemen (West and South), southwestern Oman, and eastern Oman.
*: In Sudan and hinterland Yemen, as well as being a common reconstruction of the Classical Arabic pronunciation.

;Non-literary pronunciation:
*: In eastern Arabian Peninsula in the most colloquial speech, however or sometimes to pronounce Literary Arabic loan words.

Historical pronunciation

While in all 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, where it is pronounced as due to their substrate languages being Old South Arabian languages. The rest of Yemen, as well as Sudan, "preserved" the historical pronunciation of .

Historically, till about the nineteenth century, Egyptian Arabic had the North African pronunciation, but it evolved differently to by the Cairo elite, later that spread and became today's prestigious pronunciation .

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) which is the homeland of the Arabic language, 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:

Character encodings

See also

The serif form $\gimel$ of the Hebrew letter gimel is occasionally used for the gimel function in mathematics.

References

External links

The Mystical Significance of the Hebrew Letters: Gimel

{{Northwest Semitic abjad

Phoenician alphabet
Hebrew letters