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Gimel is the third
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 abjads, including Phoenician Gīml ,
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 ...
Gimel , Aramaic Gāmal ,
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 ...
Gāmal , and
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a 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. E.Watson; Walte ...
(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 Lower Egypt ( ar, مصر السفلى '; ) is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, from El Aiyat, south of modern-day Cairo, and Dahshur. Historically, t ...
, the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of
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 ...
where it is pronounced as the voiced velar plosive ( see below). In its
Proto-Canaanite Proto-Canaanite is the name given to :(a) the Proto-Sinaitic script when found in Canaan, dating to about the 17th century BC and later. :(b) a hypothetical ancestor of the Phoenician script before some cut-off date, typically 1050 BCE, with an u ...
form, the letter may have been named after a weapon that was either a
staff sling A sling is a projectile weapon typically used to throw a blunt projectile such as a stone, clay, or lead " sling-bullet". It is also known as the shepherd's sling or slingshot (in British English). Someone who specializes in using slings i ...
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 The letter yogh (ȝogh) ( ; Scots: ; Middle English: ) was used in Middle English and Older Scots, representing ''y'' () and various velar phonemes. It was derived from the Insular form of the letter ''g''. In Middle English writing, tailed z ...
, and the
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = Gr ...
Г and Ґ.


Hebrew gimel


Variations

Hebrew spelling:
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...
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 Barry Bruce Powell (born 1942) is an American classical scholar. He is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of the widely used textbook ''Classical Myth'' and many other books. Trained at ...
, 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 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 ...
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 Dalet (, also spelled Daleth or Daled) is the fourth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Dālet 𐤃, Hebrew Dālet , Aramaic Dālath , Syriac Dālaṯ , and Arabic (in abjadi order; 8th in modern order). Its sound value is ...
, 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 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 ...
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 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 w ...
, 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 ''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac ܥ, and Arabic (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). The letter represents ...
'', '' teth'', '' nun'', '' zayin'', and ''
tsadi Tsade (also spelled , , , , tzadi, sadhe, tzaddik) is the eighteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ṣādē , Hebrew ṣādi , Aramaic ṣāḏē , Syriac ṣāḏē ܨ, Ge'ez ṣädäy ጸ, and Arabic . Its oldest phonet ...
''. The letter gimel is the
electoral symbol An electoral symbol is a standardised symbol allocated to an independent candidate or political party by a country's election commission for use in election ballots. Usage Symbols are used by parties in their campaigning, and printed on ballot ...
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 The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
/tie either below or within it to represent the borrowed
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
(), 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 The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
. 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 The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
,
Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...
, 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 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 ...
, and eastern Oman. *: In Sudan and hinterland Yemen, as well as being a common reconstruction of the
Classical Arabic Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
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 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 ...
, 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 Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast and sha ...
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 The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
(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 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 ...
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