Gimel

This article is about the Semitic letter. For other uses, see Gimel (disambiguation).

"Gimmel" redirects here. For the music group, see Gimmel (music group).

← Bet Gimel Dalet →
Phoenician
Hebrew	Template:Hebrew
Aramaic
Syriac	ܓ
Arabic	ج
Phonemic representation	d͡ʒ, ʒ, ɡ, ɟ, ɣ
Position in alphabet	3
Numerical value	3
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Greek	Γ
Latin	C G Ȝ
Cyrillic	Г Ґ

Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml , Hebrew ˈGimel ג, Aramaic Gāmal , Syriac Gāmal ܓ, and Arabic ǧīm ج (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 [ɡ]; in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents either a /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/ for most Arabic speakers except in Lower Egypt, the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of Oman where it is pronounced as a voiced velar plosive [ɡ] (see below).

In its unattested, yet hypothetical, Proto-Canaanite form, the letter may have been named after a weapon that was either a staff sling or a throwing stick, 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 and G and yogh , and the Cyrillic Г and Ґ.

Hebrew gimel

Variations

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ג	ג	ג

Hebrew spelling: גִּימֶל

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 /ɡ/, /ʒ/, or /d͡ʒ/ when with a dagesh, and /ɣ/ without a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the combination Template:Hebrew (gimel followed by a geresh) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote [d͡ʒ].

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

Gamal/Gomal
Madnḫaya Gamal
Serṭo Gomal
Esṭrangela Gamal

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 a hard pronunciation (qûššāyâ ) it represents [ɡ], like "goat". 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.

Arabic ǧīm

an approximation of the main pronunciations of written ⟨ج⟩ in Arabic dialects.

The Arabic letter ج is named جيم ǧīm [d͡ʒiːm, ʒiːm, ɡiːm, ɟiːm]. It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ج‎	ـج‎	ـجـ‎	جـ‎

In most Modern Standard Arabic (Literary Arabic) registers and languages that use the Arabic script (e.g. Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Uyghur, Malay, etc) 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 is also found in Southern Arabian Peninsula. Differences in pronunciation occur because speakers of Modern Standard Arabic pronounce words in accordance to their spoken variety of Arabic. In such varieties, cognate words will have consistent differences in pronunciation of the letter:

The three main pronunciations:

• [d͡ʒ]: In most of the Arabian Peninsula, Algeria, Iraq, some parts of the Levant. However, in Algeria and the Arabian Peninsula, it may be softened to [ʒ] in some environments.
• [ʒ]: In most of the Levant and Northwestern Africa.
• [g]: The standard pronunciation in Egypt, parts of Yemen (West and South), and southwestern Oman, also in Soqotri language, as in Hebrew and the other Semitic languages. This pronunciation also exists colloquially in Northwestern Africa in words that contain grooved alveolar sounds (/s/, /z/) but not to pronounce Literary Arabic.

Other pronunciations:

• [ɟ]: In some regions of Sudan and Yemen, as well as being a common reconstruction of the Classical Arabic pronunciation.

• [j]: In eastern Arabian Peninsula in the most colloquial speech but [d͡ʒ] or sometimes [ʒ] to pronounce Literary Arabic loan words.

Egyptians always use the letter to represent [ɡ] as well as in names and loanwords, such as جولف "golf". However, ج may be used in Egypt to transcribe /ʒ~d͡ʒ/ (normally pronounced [ʒ]) or if there is a need to differentiate between them completely then چ can be used instead to represent /ʒ/, which is also a proposal for Mehri and Soqotri languages.

Palatalization

While in most Semitic languages, e.g. Aramaic, Hebrew, Ge'ez, Old South Arabian the Gimel represents a [ɡ], Arabic is considered unique among them where the Gimel or 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 Egyptian Arabic and a number of Yemeni and Omani dialects, where it is pronounced as [ɡ] due to their substrate languages being Old South Arabian languages.

It is not well known when this change 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) which is the homeland of the Arabic language, the ⟨ج⟩ represents a [d͡ʒ] and ⟨ق⟩ represents a [ɡ], except in western and southern 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:

Language / Dialects	Pronunciation of the letters
	ج	ق
Proto-Semitic	[g]	[kʼ]
Parts of Southern Arabia1	[g]	[q]
Most of the Arabian Peninsula	[d͡ʒ]2	[g]
Modern Standard Arabic	[d͡ʒ]3	[q]

Notes:

1. Coastal Yemen and southern Oman.
2. [ʒ] can be an allophone in some dialects.
3. in most Modern Standard Arabic registers ⟨ج⟩ is pronouned [d͡ʒ] or [ʒ], but in Egypt [g], Yemen [ɡ, ɟ], and Sudan [ɟ].

Ethiopian/Sudanese Gimel

The dialect of Eastern Africa often utilizes the gimel sofit when the gimel ends a word. The letter is a traditional gimel with an add-on curve on the bottom.

Character encodings

Character information

Preview	ג		ج		گ		ܓ		ࠂ		ℷ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER GIMEL		ARABIC LETTER JEEM		ARABIC LETTER GAF		SYRIAC LETTER GAMAL		SAMARITAN LETTER GAMAN		GIMEL SYMBOL
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1490	U+05D2	1580	U+062C	1711	U+06AF	1811	U+0713	2050	U+0802	8503	U+2137
UTF-8	215 146	D7 92	216 172	D8 AC	218 175	DA AF	220 147	DC 93	224 160 130	E0 A0 82	226 132 183	E2 84 B7
Numeric character reference	ג	ג	ج	ج	گ	گ	ܓ	ܓ	ࠂ	ࠂ	ℷ	ℷ
Named character reference											ℷ

Character information

Preview	𐎂		𐡂		𐤂
Unicode name	UGARITIC LETTER GAMLA		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER GIMEL		PHOENICIAN LETTER GAML
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	66434	U+10382	67650	U+10842	67842	U+10902
UTF-8	240 144 142 130	F0 90 8E 82	240 144 161 130	F0 90 A1 82	240 144 164 130	F0 90 A4 82
UTF-16	55296 57218	D800 DF82	55298 56386	D802 DC42	55298 56578	D802 DD02
Numeric character reference	𐎂	𐎂	𐡂	𐡂	𐤂	𐤂

See also

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

External links

• The Mystical Significance of the Hebrew Letters: Gimel