Ayin
| ʿÁyin | |
|---|---|
| Phoenician |  |
| Hebrew | ע |
| Aramaic |  |
| Syriac | ܥ |
| Arabic | ع |
| Phonemic representation | ʕ |
| Position in alphabet | 16 |
| Numerical value | 70 |
| Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician | |
| Arabic alphabet |
|---|
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Arabic script |
Template:Semxlit or Ayin is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Template:Ivrit and Arabic alphabet Template:ArabDIN Template:Ar (in abjadi order). It originally represented a pharyngeal consonant (IPA [[Voiced pharyngeal fricative|[ʕ]]]).
It is usually transliterated with Template:Semxlit, a symbol based on the Greek spiritus asper ʽ, for example in the name of the letter itself, Template:Semxlit.
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.
Origins
The letter name is derived from West Semitic Template:Semxlit "eye" (in Hebrew: ayin), and the Proto-Canaanite letter had an eye-shape, ultimately derived from the
|
(ỉr) hieroglyph.
There have been claims that there were two Proto-Canaanite forms; Ayin, and Ghayin[citation needed].
Hebrew Ayin
Ayin, along with Aleph, Resh, He, and Heth, cannot receive a dagesh.
Pronunciation
Ayin traditionally represents a pharyngeal sound that has no equivalent in the English language (IPA [[Voiced pharyngeal fricative|[ʕ]]]).
Ayin is pronounced by some as a glottal stop consonant sound, but is generally pronounced as silent (i.e. it is given the same treatment as Aleph).
In some historical Sephardi pronunciations, `Ayin was pronounced as a velar nasal "ng" consonant sound, while in non-"Mizrahi" modern Israeli Hebrew it is pronounced as a glottal stop consonant sound 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 `Ayin, even if `Ayin itself is no longer pronounced. Some historians have postulated the existance of an older "Ghayin" representing a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ][citation needed], which was incorporated into the softer Ayin. In Arabic, Ghayin was introduced as a variant of Ayin.
In Yiddish, the ‘Áyin is used as a vowel, rather than a consonant, and is pronounced /e/.
Transliteration
In Hebrew transliteration, the letter Ayin can be transliterated as ` or as G. Because of this, we get Gomorrah from `Amora and Gaza from `Aza (which eventually gave us the English word gauze).
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.