| Ayin | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phoenician | Hebrew | Aramaic | Syriac | Arabic |
| ע | ܥ | ع,ع,ع | ||
| Alphabetic derivatives |
Greek | Latin | Cyrillic | |
| Ο | O | О | ||
| Phonemic representation: | ʕ | |||
| Position in alphabet: | 16 | |||
| Numerical (Gematria/Abjad) value: | 70 | |||
Ayin or ʿayin (Hebrew: [ajin], Arabic: [ʕajn][see below]) is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew ע and Arabic ʿayn ع (in abjadi order). It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet. It represents a sound like a voiced pharyngeal fricative (/ʕ/), which has no equivalent in English.
There are many possible transliterations, most commonly ʿ, (U+02BF) "modifier letter left half ring". For details, see section Transliteration.
Contents |
| Semitic alphabets |
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| Phoenician (c.1050 – 200 BCE) |
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| Hebrew (400 BCE – present) |
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History · Transliteration |
| Syriac (200 BCE – present) |
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| Arabic (400 CE – present) |
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History · Transliteration |
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Omicron (Ο), the Latin O, and Cyrillic (О), all representing vowels.
The sound represented by ayin is common to much of the Afrasiatic language family, such as the Egyptian, Cushitic, and Semitic languages. Some scholars believe that the sound in Proto-Indo-European transcribed h3 was similar, though this is debatable. (See Laryngeal theory#Pronunciation.)
ʿAyin is usually transliterated into the Latin alphabet with ʿ, (U+02BF) "modifier letter left half ring" (in the Spacing Modifier Letters range). This is true in ALA-LC romanization of Arabic. This symbol originated from Semitic romanization and Egyptological transliteration, where it was inspired by the Greek spiritus asper. Example: The name of the letter itself, ʿayin.
As a substitute for the left half ring, other symbols resembling it are sometimes used, such as a superscript c (c), a single opening quotation mark (‘), the grave accent (`), ˁ (U+02C1 MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED GLOTTAL STOP), or the IPA pharyngeal symbols [ʕ] (U+0295 LATIN LETTER PHARYNGEAL VOICED FRICATIVE) and [ˤ] (U+02E4 modifier letter small reversed glottal stop). However, such substitutions obviously may cause confusion, such as with the glottal stop consonant hamza.
In loanwords, ʿayin is commonly omitted altogether. Examples: Iraq العراق al-ʿIrāq, Oman عمان ʿUmān, Saudi Arabia العربية السعودية al-ʿArabiyyah as-Saʿūdiyyah, Arab or Arabic عربي, ʿArabī, Amman عمان ʿAmmān, etc.
Specifically for use in transliterating the Egyptian language, Ꜥ (U+A724 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL AIN) and ꜥ (U+A725 LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL AIN) were added to the Latin Extended-D range in Unicode version 5.1.
The Maltese language, which uses a Latin alphabet (and is the only Semitic language to do so in its standard form) writes the ayin as għ.
The Latin orthography for the Somali language represents the ayin with the ordinary Roman letter c.
The Arabic chat alphabet uses the digit 3 as transliteration.
The Arabic letter ﻉ (called ﻋﻴﻦ ʿayn). It is commonly known in Egypt as [ʕeːn]. It is written in one of several ways depending on its position in the word:
| Position in word: | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form of letter: | ع | ـع | ـعـ | عـ |
| Orthographic variants | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Various Print Fonts | Cursive Hebrew |
Rashi Script |
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| Serif | Sans-serif | Monospaced | ||
| ע | ע | ע | ||
Hebrew spelling: עַיִן
Ayin, along with Aleph, Resh, He, and Heth, cannot receive a dagesh.
Ayin has traditionally been described as a voiced pharyngeal fricative ([ʕ]). However, this may be imprecise. Although a pharyngeal fricative have occasionally been observed for ayin in Arabic, and so therefore may occur in Hebrew as well, the sound is more commonly epiglottal ([ʢ]),[1] and may also be a pharyngealized glottal stop ([ʔˤ]).
In some historical Sephardi pronunciations, `ayin represented a velar nasal ([ŋ]) sound, as in English singing, while in non-"Mizrahi" modern Israeli Hebrew represents a glottal stop in certain cases, but is mostly silent (that is, it behaves the same as aleph). However, often changes in adjoining vowels testify to the former presence of a pharyngeal or epiglottal articulation.
Ayin is also one of the three letters that can take a vowel at the end of a word, and the vowel it takes is furtive patach / patach ganuv.
In Hebrew loanwords in Greek and Latin, ayin is sometimes reflected as /g/, since the biblical phonemes /ʕ/ (or "`") and /ʁ/ (represented by "g") were both represented in Hebrew writing by the letter ayin (see Ġain). Because of this, we get Gomorrah from the original /ʁamora/ (modern `Amora) and Gaza from the original /ʁazza/ (`Aza), which eventually gave us the English word gauze.
In Yiddish, the ‘Áyin is used to write the vowel E (when not part of the diphthong ey).
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.
Because the sound is difficult for most non-Arabs to pronounce, it is often used as a shibboleth by Arabic-speakers; other sounds, such as Ḥā and Ḍād are also used.
ʿAyn is one of the most common letters in Arabic, and one of the most notoriously difficult sounds for Western learners to pronounce. One piece of advice for people trying to make the ʿayn sound is to "sing the lowest possible note, then one lower".
Depending on the region, the Arabic ʿayn ranges from a pharyngeal [ʕ] to an epiglottal [ʢ].[1]
As in Hebrew, the letter originally stood for two sounds, the other being /ʕ/ and /ʁ/. When pointing was developed, ġayn was distinguished with a dot on top (غ) for /ʁ/. In Maltese, which is written with the Latin alphabet, the digraph għ, which is known by its Arabic name ajn, is used to write what was originally the same sound.
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