Ayin

Ayin (also ayn or ain; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician ʿayin 𐤏, Hebrew ʿayin , Aramaic ʿē 𐡏, Syriac ʿē ܥ, and Arabic ʿayn (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪒‎‎, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . The letter represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative ( ) or a similarly articulated consonant. In some Semitic languages and dialects, the phonetic value of the letter has changed, or the phoneme has been lost altogether. In the revived Modern Hebrew it is reduced to a glottal stop or is omitted entirely, in part due to Ashkenazi European influence and their difficulty in pronouncing the consonant. The Phoenician letter is the origin of the Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letters O, O and O. It is also the origin of the Armenian letters Ո and Օ. The Arabic character is the origin of the Latin-script letter Ƹ.

Origins

The letter name is derived from the Proto-Sinaitic letter "eye" (as in Biblical Hebrew עַיִן (ayn) 'eye'), and the Phoenician letter had the shape of a circle or oval, clearly representing an eye, perhaps ultimately derived from the ı͗r hieroglyph (Gardiner D4). The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Ο, Latin O, and Cyrillic О, all representing vowels. It is also gave rise to the Greek letter omega as well as its Cyrillic counterpart. The sound represented by ayin is common to much of the Afroasiatic language family, such as in the Egyptian language, the Cushitic languages and the Semitic languages.

Arabic ʿayn

The Arabic letter is the eighteenth letter of the alphabet. It is written in one of several ways depending on its position in the word:

Pronunciation

Arabic ʿayn is one of the most common letters in Arabic. Depending on the region, it ranges from a pharyngeal to an epiglottal . It is voiced, its voiceless counterpart being . Due to its position as the innermost letter to emerge from the throat, al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi, who wrote the first Arabic dictionary, actually started writing his Kitab al-'Ayn ('The Book of ʿAyn') with as the first letter instead of the eighteenth; he viewed its origins deep down in the throat as a sign that it was the first sound, the essential sound, the voice and a representation of the self. In the Persian language and other languages using the Persian alphabet, this letter has a different function and represents a glottal stop , or in Tatar language. As in Hebrew, the letter originally stood for two sounds, and voiced uvular fricative . When pointing was developed, was distinguished with a dot on top . In Maltese, which is written with the Latin alphabet, the digraph għ, called għajn, is used to write what was originally the same sound. Because the sound is difficult for many non-native speakers to pronounce, it is often used as a shibboleth by native Arabic speakers; other sounds, such as and are also used. It is typically represented with the numeral 3 in the Arabic chat alphabet. In languages such as Kazakh and Kyrgyz, it represents .

Southeast Asian nga

In some languages of Southeast Asia, the letter nga is used. The letter is derived from the letter ʿayn, via the derived letter ghayn, and it is thus written as: This letter, derived from ( ), is used to represent in: the Jawi script, for Acehnese Banjarese Kerinci Maguindanaon Malay Minangkabau Tausūg Ternate the Pegon script, for Javanese Sundanese Arabic Afrikaans, for Afrikaans historically, called ngīn ( )

Hebrew ayin

Hebrew spelling:

Phonetic representation

ʿayin has traditionally been described as a voiced pharyngeal fricative ( ). However, this may be imprecise. Although a pharyngeal fricative has occasionally been observed for ʿayin in Arabic and so may occur in Hebrew as well, the sound is more commonly epiglottal ( ), and may also be a pharyngealized glottal stop ( ). In some historical Sephardi and Ashkenazi pronunciations, ʿayin represented a velar nasal ( ). Remnants can be found in the Yiddish pronunciations of some words such as /ˈjaŋkəv/ and /ˈmansə/ from Hebrew (yaʿăqōḇ, "Jacob") and (maʿăse, "story"), but in other cases, the nasal has disappeared and been replaced by /j/, such as /ˈmajsə/ and /ˈmajrəv/ from Hebrew and (maʿărāḇ, "west"). In Israeli Hebrew (except for Mizrahi pronunciations), it represents a glottal stop in certain cases but is usually silent (it behaves the same as aleph). However, changes in adjoining vowels often testify to the former presence of a pharyngeal or epiglottal articulation. Additionally, it may be used as a shibboleth to identify the ethnolinguistic background of a Hebrew-speaker, as most Israeli Arab and some of Israel's Mizrahi Jews (mainly Yemenite Jews) use the more traditional pronunciation, while other Hebrew-speakers pronounce it similar to Aleph. Ayin is also one of the three letters that can take a furtive patach (patach ganuv). In Hebrew loanwords in Greek and Latin, ʿayin is sometimes reflected as /g/, since the biblical phonemes /ʕ/ (or "ʿ") and /ʁ/ (represented by "g") were both represented in Hebrew writing by the letter ʿayin (see Ġain). Gomorrah is from the original /ʁamora/ (modern ʿAmora) and Gaza from the original /ʁazza/ (ʿaza) (cf. Arabic غزة Ġazzah, IPA: [ˈɣazza].) In Yiddish, the ʿayin is used to write the vowel e when it is not part of the diphthong ey.

Syriac e

Transliteration

In Semitic philology, there is a long-standing tradition of rendering Semitic ayin with the Greek rough breathing mark (e.g. Arabs ). Depending on typography, this could look similar to either an articulate single opening quotation mark (e.g. ). or as a raised semi-circle open to the right (e.g. ). This is by analogy to the transliteration of alef (glottal stop, hamza) by the Greek smooth breathing mark , rendered as single closing quotation mark or as raised semi-circle open to the left. This convention has been adopted by DIN in 1982 and by ISO in 1984 for Arabic (DIN 31635, ISO 233) and Hebrew (DIN 31636, ISO 259). The shape of the "raised semi-circle" for ayin and alef was adopted by the Encyclopedia of Islam (edited 1913–1938, 1954–2005, and from 2007), and from there by the International Journal of Middle East Studies. This convention has since also been followed by ISO (ISO 233-2 and ISO 259-2, 1993/4) and by DIN in 1982. A notable exception remains, ALA-LC (1991), the system used by the Library of Congress, continues to recommend modifier letter turned comma (for Hebrew) or left single quotation mark (for Arabic). The symbols for the corresponding phonemes in the International Phonetic Alphabet, for voiced pharyngeal fricative (ayin) and for glottal stop (alef) were adopted in the 1928 revision. In anglicized Arabic or Hebrew names or in loanwords, ayin is often omitted entirely: Iraq , Arab , Saudi , etc.; Afula , Arad , etc. Maltese, which uses a Latin alphabet, the only Semitic language to do so in its standard form, writes the ayin as ⟨għ⟩. It is usually unvocalized in speech. The Somali Latin alphabet and Cypriot Arabic alphabet represents the ayin with the letter ⟨c⟩. The informal way to represent it in Arabic chat alphabet uses the digit ⟨3⟩ as transliteration. The letter Reversed Ezh (Ƹ) is based on Arabic ayin.

Names in other languages