Gimel

Gimel is the third (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order) letter of the Semitic abjads, including Arabic ǧīm ج‎, Aramaic gāmal 𐡂, Hebrew gīmel ג‎, Phoenician gīml 𐤂, and Syriac gāmal ܓ. Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, except Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive [ɡ]. In Modern Standard Arabic, it represents either a /d͡ʒ/ or /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 [ɡ] (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.

The Arabic letter ج is named جيم ǧīm / jīm [d͡ʒiːm, ʒiːm, ɡiːm, ɟiːm]. It has four forms, and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

The similarity to ḥāʼ 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 zāy and rāʾ.

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 [d͡ʒ], which was the agreed-upon pronunciation by the end of the nineteenth century to recite the Qur'an. It is pronounced as a fricative [ʒ] in most of Northern Africa and the Levant, and [ɡ] 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 ([d͡ʒ] or [ʒ]) except for speakers in parts of Yemen and Oman where ج is [d͡ʒ] or [ɟ] when speaking Modern Standard Arabic but [g] in their everday dialectal speech. Another exception is Egypt, where in the Cairene (Egyptian) Arabic both colloquial and literary the ج jīm is realized as a velar plosive [ɡ], but as [d͡ʒ] when reciting the Qur’an.^[1] However, ج (also written چ) may be used in Egypt to transcribe /d͡ʒ~ʒ/ (normally pronounced [ʒ]) in loanwords, for example جيبة or چيبة [ʒiːba] “skirt” from French “jupe”.

The standard pronunciations in both MSA and local dialects

• [d͡ʒ]: 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 ġ /d͡ʒ/ in Maltese (A language derived from Sicilian Arabic) as in ġar [d͡ʒaːr] (neighbor) and Arabic جار (neighbor).
• [ʒ]: 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.
• [g]: In Egypt where the Cairene (Egyptian) dialect dominates the media, but not all Egyptians use this pronunciation (e.g Saidi Arabic).
• [ɟ]: In Sudan, hinterland Yemen, and by some speakers in Saudi Arabia, as well as being a common reconstruction of the Classical Arabic pronunciation.

Non-literary (only dialectal) pronunciation

• [g]: in coastal Yemen (West and South), and the urban dialects of southwestern and eastern Oman (e.g. Muscat and Salalah dialects).
• [j]: In eastern Arabian Peninsula and Iraq but only colloquial speech, for example Kuwaiti Arabic وايد [waːjɪd] “a lot” vs. Najdi Arabic واجد [waːd͡ʒɪd].
• [ɟʝ]: 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 [ɡ], Arabic is considered unique among them where the Jīm ⟨ج⟩ was palatalized to an affricate [d͡ʒ] or a fricative [ʒ] 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 [g].

It is not well known when palatalization occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Qāf ⟨ق⟩ as a [ɡ], but in most of the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE and parts of Yemen and Oman), the ⟨ج⟩ represents a [d͡ʒ] and ⟨ق⟩ represents a [ɡ], except in coastal Yemen and southern Oman where ⟨ج⟩ represents a [ɡ] and ⟨ق⟩ represents a [q], which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of ⟨ج⟩ to [d͡ʒ] and the pronunciation of the ⟨ق⟩ as a [ɡ] as shown in the table below:

Notes:

1. Western and southern Yemen: Taʽizzi, Adeni and Tihamiyya dialects (coastal Yemen), in addition to southwestern (Salalah region) and eastern Oman, including Muscat, the capital.
2. The standard pronunciation for Standard Arabic’s ق is [q] in most of the Arabian Peninsula, except in parts of Yemen as in Sanaa; where ق is [ɡ] in both the literary Standard Arabic pronunciation and the dialectal speech (Sanʽani dialect). For the pronunciation of ج in Modern Standard Arabic, check Jīm.

Note: In Kazakh ⟨ج⟩ is pronounced /d͡ʒ/ in some dialects, such as in the south and east.^[4]

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:

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ג	ג	ג

Hebrew spelling: 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 /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].

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%.

Gamal/Gomal
Madnḫaya Gamal
Serṭo Gomal
Esṭrangela Gamal

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.

The serif form ${\displaystyle \gimel }$ of the Hebrew letter gimel is occasionally used for the gimel function in mathematics.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gimel (letter).

• The Mystical Significance of the Hebrew Letters: Gimel