Ayin
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| ʿÁyin | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arabic | Syriac | Hebrew | Aramaic | Phoenician |
|
ﻋ,ﻉ | ܥ | ע | 
| 
|
| Phonemic representation (IPA): | ʕ | |||
| Position in alphabet: | 16 | |||
| Gematria/Abjad value: | 70 | |||
ʿÁyin or Ayin is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew ע and Arabic ʿayn ع (in abjadi order). It originally represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative (IPA /ʕ/).
It is usually transliterated into the Latin alphabet with ʿ, a symbol based on the Greek spiritus asper ʽ, for example in the name of the letter itself, ʿayin. Less accurate transcriptions may use an apostrophe, failing to distinguish the ayin from the glottal stop consonant, aleph. Even this representation is often omitted, as these symbols are often misinterpreted as punctuation instead of actual consonants. The Somali language represents the ayin with the ordinary Roman letter c, and similarly, Egyptologists will often use the superscript letter c to represent this sound.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Omicron (Ο), and hence the Latin O, and the equivalent in the Cyrillic alphabet, all representing vowels.
Contents |
[edit] Origins
The letter name is derived from West Semitic ʿen "eye" (in modern Arabic literally "eye"; in Hebrew: ayin), and the Proto-Canaanite letter had an eye-shape, ultimately derived from the hieroglyph (ỉr) <hiero>D4</hiero>
[edit] Hebrew Ayin
| Hebrew alphabet | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| א ב ג ד ה ו | |||||
| ז ח ט י כך | |||||
| ל מם נן ס ע פף | |||||
| צץ ק ר ש ת | |||||
| History · Transliteration Niqqud · Dagesh · Gematria Cantillation · Numeration | |||||
| Arabic alphabet | ||||||
| ﺍ || ﺏ || ﺕ || ﺙ || ﺝ || ﺡ || ﺥ | ||||||
| ﺩ || ﺫ || ﺭ || ﺯ || ﺱ || ﺵ || ﺹ | ||||||
|
ﺽ ||
ﻁ ||
ﻅ ||
ﻉ || ﻍ || ﻑ || ﻕ | ||||||
| ﻙ || ﻝ || ﻡ || ﻥ || هـ || ﻭ || ﻱ | ||||||
| History · Transliteration Diacritics · hamza ء Numerals · Numeration | ||||||
| Syriac alphabet | |||||
| ܐ | ܒ | ܓ | ܕ | ||
| ܗ | ܘ | ܙ | ܚ | ܛ | ܝ |
| ܟܟ | ܠ | ܡܡ | ܢܢ | ܣ | ܥ |
| ܦ | ܨ | ܩ | ܪ | ܫ | ܬ |
Ayin, along with Aleph, Resh, He, and Heth, cannot receive a dagesh.
[edit] Phonemic representation
Ayin traditionally represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative that has no equivalent in the English language ([ʕ]).
In some historical Sephardi pronunciations, `Ayin represented a velar nasal "ng" consonant sound, while in non-"Mizrahi" modern Israeli Hebrew represents a glottal stop in certain cases, but is mostly silent (i.e. it is given the same treatment as Aleph). However, certain changes in adjoining vowels often testify to the former presence of the glottal stop, even if it is no longer pronounced. In Arabic, Ghayin was introduced as a variant of Ayin.
In Yiddish, the ‘Áyin is used as a vowel, rather than a consonant, and represents /e/.
[edit] Transliteration
In Hebrew transliteration, the letter Ayin can be transliterated as `. In Greek and Latin it was sometimes represented as g, since the biblical phonemes /ʕ/ (or "`") and /ʁ/ (represented by "g") were both represented in Hebrew writing by the letter Ayin, just as they later merged in pronunciation to /ʕ/ and therefore are pronounced identically (as /ʕ/ or /ʔ/ or not pronounced at all) in all modern varieties of Hebrew (see Ġayn). Because of this, we get Gomorrah from the original /ʁamora/ (`Amora) and Gaza from the original /ʁazza/ (`Aza), which eventually gave us the English word gauze.
[edit] Significance
In gematria, ayin represents the number 70.
Ayin is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See Shin, Gimmel, Teth, Nun, Zayin, and Tzadi.
[edit] Pronunciation
Ayin is one of the most notoriously difficult letters for western learners to pronounce. The sound is somewhat like a combination of an emphatic "H" and long "aaah" sound, while clenching the muscles at the back of the throat, as in the gagging reflex. The produced sound has been described as somewhat like the bleating of a goat. To western listeners, the letter sounds something like an "Aah" with slightly raised intonation. Unfortunately, ayin is one of the most common letters in Arabic, presenting a significant barrier to western learners attempting to learn the language.als:ע ar:ع br:Ayin (lizherenn) de:Ajin arc:ܥܐ es:Ayn fr:Ayin (lettre) he:ע nl:Ajin fi:Ajin
