Gimel is the third (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order) letter of the Semitic abjads, including Arabic ǧīm, Aramaic gāmal, Hebrew gīmel, Phoenician gīml, and Syriac gāmal ܓ. Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, except Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive pronounced as /link/. In Modern Standard Arabic, it represents either a pronounced as //d͡ʒ// or pronounced as //ʒ// for most Arabic speakers except in Northern Egypt, the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of Oman where it is pronounced as the voiced velar plosive pronounced as /link/ (see below).
In its Proto-Canaanite form, the letter may have been named after a weapon that was either a staff sling or a throwing stick (spear thrower), 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, G, Ɣ and Ȝ, and the Cyrillic Г, Ґ, and Ғ.
| ǧīm جيم | |
| Letter: | Arabic: ج |
| Script: | Arabic script |
| Type: | Abjad |
| Language: | Arabic language |
| Phonemes: | pronounced as /link/, (pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/) |
| Alphanumber: | 5 |
| Direction: | Right-to-left |
| Fam1: | |
| Fam5: | ح |
The Arabic letter Arabic: ج is named Arabic: جيم / pronounced as /ar/. It has four forms, and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:The similarity to Arabic: [[Heth#Arabic ḥāʾ|ح]] is likely a function of the original Syriac forms converging to a single symbol, requiring that one of them be distinguished as a dot; a similar process occurred to and .
In all varieties of Arabic, cognate words will have consistent differences in pronunciation of the letter. The standard pronunciation taught outside the Arabic speaking world is an affricate pronounced as /link/, which was the agreed-upon pronunciation by the end of the nineteenth century to recite the Qur'an. It is pronounced as a fricative pronounced as /link/ in most of Northern Africa and the Levant, and pronounced as /link/ is the prestigious and most common pronunciation in Egypt, which is also found in Southern Arabian Peninsula. Differences in pronunciation occur because readers of Modern Standard Arabic pronounce words following their native dialects.
For most speakes the standard pronunciation of the letter in literary (MSA) and everday colloquial speech are the same (pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/) except for speakers in parts of Yemen and Oman where Arabic: ج is pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ when speaking Modern Standard Arabic but pronounced as /link/ in their everday dialectal speech. Another exception is Egypt, where in the Cairene (Egyptian) Arabic both colloquial and literary the Arabic: ج jīm is realized as a velar plosive pronounced as /link/, but as pronounced as /link/ when reciting the Qur’an.[1] However, Arabic: ج (also written Arabic: چ) may be used in Egypt to transcribe /pronounced as /link/~pronounced as /link/pronounced as /// (normally pronounced pronounced as /link/) in loanwords, for example Arabic: جيبة or Arabic: چيبة pronounced as /link/ “skirt” from French “jupe”.
In most of the Arabian Peninsula, parts of Algeria (Algiers accent), Iraq, parts of Egypt (Saidi dialect), parts of the Levant (most of Jordan, parts of Syria, e.g Aleppo, parts of Palestine, e.g Gaza) This is also the commonly taught pronunciation outside the Arabic speaking countries when Literary Arabic is taught as a foreign language. It is the agreed-upon pronunciation to recite the Qur'an, and the dominant pronunciation of the letter in other languages that use the Arabic script, and it corresponds to Maltese: [[ġ]] pronounced as /link/ in Maltese (A language derived from Sicilian Arabic) as in ġar pronounced as /link/ (neighbor) and Arabic Arabic: جار (neighbor).
In the Levant (especially in Syria and Lebanon and parts of Palestine and Jordan), parts of Iraq (e.g Muthanna dialect), most of the Maghreb, and parts of Algeria (Oran dialect)[2] and by some speakers in western Saudi Arabia.
In Egypt where the Cairene (Egyptian) dialect dominates the media, but not all Egyptians use this pronunciation (e.g Saidi Arabic).
In Sudan, hinterland Yemen, and by some speakers in Saudi Arabia, as well as being a common reconstruction of the Classical Arabic pronunciation.
in coastal Yemen (West and South), and the urban dialects of southwestern and eastern Oman (e.g. Muscat and Salalah dialects).
In eastern Arabian Peninsula and Iraq but only colloquial speech, for example Kuwaiti Arabic Arabic: وايد pronounced as /link/ “a lot” vs. Najdi Arabic Arabic: واجد pronounced as /link/.
attested among some bedouin dialects in Saudi Arabia.[3]
While in most Semitic languages, e.g. Aramaic, Hebrew, Ge'ez, Old South Arabian the equivalent letter represents a pronounced as /link/, Arabic is considered unique among them where the Jīm (Arabic: [[ج]]) was palatalized to an affricate pronounced as /link/ or a fricative pronounced as /link/ in most dialects from classical times. While there is variation in Modern Arabic varieties, most of them reflect this palatalized pronunciation except in coastal Yemeni and Omani dialects as well as in Egypt, where it is pronounced pronounced as /link/.
It is not well known when palatalization occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Qāf (Arabic: [[ق]]) as a pronounced as /link/, but in most of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and parts of Yemen and Oman), the (Arabic: [[ج]]) represents a pronounced as /link/ and (Arabic: [[ق]]) represents a pronounced as /link/, except in coastal Yemen and southern Oman where (Arabic: [[ج]]) represents a pronounced as /link/ and (Arabic: [[ق]]) represents a pronounced as /link/, which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of (Arabic: [[ج]]) to pronounced as /link/ and the pronunciation of the (Arabic: [[ق]]) as a pronounced as /link/ as shown in the table below:
| Azeri | Arabic script | pronounced as /link/ |
|---|---|---|
| Balochi | ||
| Brahui | ||
| Hindko | ||
| Javanese | Pegon | |
| Kashmiri | ||
| Kurdish | Sorani | |
| Malay | Jawi | |
| Pashto | ||
| Persian | ||
| Punjabi | Shahmukhi | |
| Saraiki | ||
| Sindhi | Arabic script | |
| Swahili | Ajami | |
| Urdu | ||
| Uyghur | ||
| Uzbek | Arabic script | |
| Hausa | Ajami | pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ |
| Kazakh | ||
See main article: Che (Persian letter). A variant letter named che is used in Persian, with three dots below instead having just one dot below. However, it is not included on one of the 28 letters on the Arabic alphabet. It is thus written as:
Hebrew spelling: Hebrew: גִּימֶל
Bertrand Russell posits that the letter's form is a conventionalized image of a camel.[5] [6] 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!)”.[7]
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 pronounced as //ɡ//, pronounced as //ʒ//, or pronounced as //d͡ʒ// when with a dagesh, and pronounced as //ɣ// without a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the combination (gimel followed by a geresh) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote pronounced as /link/.
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, given its similarity to the Hebrew word dal (b. Shabbat, 104a).[8]
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.[9] [10]
In Modern Hebrew, the frequency of usage of gimel, out of all the letters, is 1.26%.
In the Syriac alphabet, the third letter is Syriac: ܓ — Gamal in eastern pronunciation, Gomal in western pronunciation (Syriac: 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 pronounced as /link/, like "goat". When Gamal/Gomal has a soft pronunciation (rûkkāḵâ ) it traditionally represents pronounced as /link/ (Syriac: 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 pronounced as /link/ (Syriac: ܓ̰ܡܵܠ), which is used in Garshuni and some Neo-Aramaic languages to write loan and foreign words from Arabic or Persian.
The serif form
\gimel