Gimel

Gimel is the third letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew ג, Syriac ܓ and Arabic ǧīm ج (in alphabetical order; 5th in spelling order). Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, save Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive [ɡ]; in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents [d͡ʒ]

In its unattested 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 the Cyrillic Г.

Hebrew Gimel

Variations

Hebrew spelling: גִּימֵל

Some theorize that the letter comes from a camel, called a "gamal" in Hebrew. [1] The letter may be the shape of the walking animal's head, neck, and forelegs.

The letter gimel is one of the six letters which can receive a Dagesh Kal. The six 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. In the Temani pronunciation, Gimel represents /ɡ/, /ʒ/, or /d͡ʒ/ when with a dagesh, and /ɣ/ without a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the combination ג׳ (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 it resembles a person in motion; symbolically, a rich man running after a poor man to give him charity, as in the Hebrew alphabet gimel directly precedes dalet, which signifies a poor or lowly man, from the Hebrew word dal.

The word gimel is related to gemul, which means 'justified repayment', or the giving of reward and punishment.

Gimmel is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See shin, ayin, teth, nun, zayin, and tsadi.

in Modern Hebrew the frequency of the usage of gimel, out of all the letters, is 1.26%.

Syriac Gamal/Gomal

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

The associated Arabic letter ج is named جيم ǧīm. It is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

Modern Standard Arabic has [d͡ʒ] as the standard pronunciation of the letter. Differences in pronunciation occur, because speakers of Modern Standard Arabic often pronounce words in accordance to their spoken variety of Arabic. In such varieties, cognate words will have consistent differences in pronunciation of this sound:

• Algerian, Iraqi, and several other dialects, pronounce it [d͡ʒ].
• In the Egyptian dialect and some Yemeni dialects (such as Tihami), it is normally pronounced [ɡ] (as in Hebrew and the other Semitic languages).
• Levantine and Maghrebi Arabic (save Algerian), pronounce it [ʒ].
• In Kuwaiti Arabic and Gulf Arabic, it is pronounced [j] in the most colloquial speech.
• In others (particularly among Bedouins) it is pronounced as a palatalized [ɡʲ], a common reconstruction of the pronunciation in the Classical Arabic of early Islamic times.
• In some dialects of Sudanese and Yemeni Arabic, it is pronounced [ɟ], another common reconstruction of the Classical Arabic pronunciation.

Egyptians always use the letter ج to represent [ɡ], as well as in loanwords, such as جولف 'golf'. However, it isn't incorrect to use it in Egypt for transcribing /ʒ/~/d͡ʒ/ (normally pronounced [ʒ]).

In Perso-Arabic script, it is called jīm.

In Egypt, when there is a need to transcribe /ʒ/ or /d͡ʒ/, both are approximated into [ʒ] using چ. And in Persian, Urdu, Sindhi, etc, چ represents the sound /t͡ʃ/.

External links

• The Mystical Significance of the Hebrew Letters: Gimel