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Learn more about "Gimel"
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Gimel
- ''Gimmel redirects here, for the musical group, see Gimmel (music group).
Gimel is the third Letter (alphabet)|letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician language|Phoenician, Aramaic language|Aramaic, Hebrew language|Hebrew , Syriac alphabet|Syriac and Arabic alphabet|Arabic (in abjadi order; 5th in higa'i order). Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets save Arabic is a voiced velar plosive ; in Arabic, it represents a voiced postalveolar affricate in the Literary Arabic|standard language, though this varies (with and being the most common) from dialect to dialect.
The word is ultimately derived from Proto-Semitic :wikt:Appendix:Proto-Semitic *gamal-|*gamal- "camel".
In its Proto-Canaanite form, the letter was likely named after a "throwing stick, boomerang," ultimately deriving from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on the Egyptian hieroglyphs|hieroglyph below:
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The Phoenician alphabet|Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek alphabet|Greek gamma (Γ) and the Latin alphabet|Latin C and G and Cyrillic alphabet|Cyrillic Г.
Hebrew Gimel
Variations
The letter gimel is one of the six letters which can receive a Dagesh Kal. The six are Beth (letter)|Bet, Gimel, Daleth (letter)|Daled, Kaph, Pe (letter)|Pe, and Taw (letter)|Taf. Three of them (Beth (letter)|Bet, Kaph, and Pe (letter)|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. Gimel represents, in some Sephardi areas, or when with a dagesh, and without a dagesh.
See Beth (letter)|Bet, Daleth (letter)|Daled, Kaph, Pe (letter)|Pe, and Taw (letter)|Taf.
Significance
In gematria, ''gimel'' represents the number three.
It is written like a ''vav'' with a ''Yodh|yud'' as a "foot", and it resembles a person in motion; symbolically, a rich man running after a poor man to give him charity: ''gimel'' directly precedes ''dalet'' in the Hebrew alphabet, and this which signifies a poor/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 (letter)|shin'', ''ayin'', ''teth'', ''Nun (letter)|nun'', ''zayin'', and ''Tsade|tsadi''.
Syriac Gomal/Gamal
In the Syriac alphabet, the third letter is — Gomal in western pronunciation, Gamal in eastern pronunciation (). It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds (the others are Bet (letter)|Bet, Dalet, Kaph, Pe (letter)|Pe and Taw (letter)|Taw). When Gomal/Gamal has a hard pronunciation (''qûššāyâ'') it is a href="http://www.startlearningnow.com/voiced velar plosive.htm">voiced velar plosive|. When Gomal/Gamal has a soft pronunciation ('''') it is traditionally pronounced as a href="http://www.startlearningnow.com/voiced velar fricative.htm">voiced velar fricative|. The letter, renamed ''Jomal/Jamal'', is written with a tilde/tie either below or within it to represent the borrowed phoneme , which is used in Garshuni and some Neo-Aramaic languages.
Arabic īm
The associated Arabic letter '''ﺝ''' is named '''ﺟﻴﻢ''' ''īm'' or ''jīm'', and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:
The letter ''īm'' is matched only by ''qoph|qaf'' among Arabic consonants in the number of pronunciations applied to it dialectically. As noted above, Literary Arabic|Modern Standard Arabic has the voiced postalveolar affricate as its standard pronunciation of the letter, but in Egyptian Arabic, the letter is pronounced as the voiced velar plosive (as in Hebrew and the other Semitic languages), in Levantine Arabic as the voiced postalveolar fricative , in Kuwaiti Arabic a palatal approximant , and still others (particularly among Bedouins) as a palatalization|palatalized voiced velar plosive, , the most common reconstruction from Classical Arabic.
Many Arabs pronounce ﺝ as when speaking in MSA, considering this to be standard, rather than . This pronunciation is very common for many East Arabic dialects.
External links
- The Mystical Significance of the Hebrew Letters: Gimel
Category:Phoenician alphabet
Category:Arabic letters
Category:Hebrew alphabet
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Sources: StartLearningNow, Wikipedia | Usage license: GNU FDL
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