| Arabic alphabet | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ا ب ت ث ج ح | |||||
| خ د ذ ر ز س | |||||
| ش ص ض ط ظ ع | |||||
| غ ف ق ك ل | |||||
| م ن ه و ي | |||||
| History · Transliteration Diacritics · Hamza ء Numerals · Numeration |
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The Arabic letter ﻍ (called ﻏﻴﻦ ghain, ghayn, or ġayn) is one of the six letters in the Arabic alphabet not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others being ṯāʾ, ḫāʾ, ḏāl, ḍād, ẓāʾ). It is the twenty second alphabet in new Persian alphabet. It represents the voiced velar fricative (/ɣ/) or, in case of Classical Arabic, a uvular fricative /ʁ/. In name and shape, it is a variant of ʻayn. Its numerical value is 1000 (see Abjad numerals).
A voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ (usually reconstructed for Proto-Semitic) merged with Ayin in most languages except for Arabic, Ugaritic and older varieties of the Canaanite languages. Canaanite languages and Hebrew later also merged it with Ayin, and this merger was complete in Tiberian Hebrew. The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ġ, 
.
The letter ġayn (ﻍ) is sometimes used to represent the voiced velar plosive /g/ in loan words in Arabic and is then often pronounced /ɡ/, not /ɣ/, such as the word for Bulgaria (بلغاريا), where in some cases in alteration with kāf ك is used as in "English". In many cases ﻍ is pronounced in loanwords as expected—[ɣ], not [ɡ]—although, the original language had [ɡ]. This is the mode of arabisation in dialects in which the letter ǧīm ج is pronounced as voiced postalveolar affricate [dʒ], and in dialects where it is pronounced [ʒ], but not in those that sound it as a voiced velar plosive [ɡ] in which ǧīm is used instead (e.g. Egyptian, Yemeni).
In English, the letter ﻍ in Arabic names is usually transliterated as "gh" or simply "g", e.g. بغداد Baġdād "Baghdad"; or غزة Ġazza "Gaza", which doesn't render the sound [ɣ] accurately. The closest allophone known to most English speakers is the Parisian French "r" [ʁ].
Ghain is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:
| Position in word: | Isolated | Initial | Medial | Final |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form of letter: | غ | غـ | ـغـ | ـغ |
| Proto-Semitic | Akkadian | Arabic | Canaanite | Hebrew | Aramaic | South Arabian | Ge'ez | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ġ | - | غ | ġ |  |
ġ, ʻ | ע | ʻ | ע | ʻ | |
ġ | ዐ | ʻ |
Origins of Ghain
Ghain is believed to have come from the following hieroglyph
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that depicts two twisted fibers. This coincidentally superficially resembles the IPA symbol [ɣ] upside down. [ɣ] is conventionally used for the sound of ghain.
See also
- Arabic phonology
- Ghayn, the corresponding letter in the Cyrillic orthographies for several Central Asian languages
External links
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