Gimel

"Gimmel" redirects here. For the music group, see Gimmel (music group). For other uses, see Gimel (disambiguation).

Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml , Hebrew Gimel ג, Aramaic Gāmal , Syriac Gāmal ܓ, and Arabic ǧīm ج (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order). 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).

← Bet Gimel Dalet →
Phoenician
Hebrew	ג‎
Aramaic
Syriac	ܓ
Arabic	ج
Phonemic representation	d͡ʒ, ʒ, ɡ, ɟ, ɣ
Position in alphabet	3
Numerical value	3
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Greek	Γ
Latin	C, G, Ɣ
Cyrillic	Г, Ґ

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 yogh , and the Cyrillic Г and Ґ.

Hebrew gimel

Variations

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.^[1][2] 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!)".^[3]

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].

Significance

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, from the Hebrew word dal (b. Shabbat, 104a).^[4]

The word gimel is related to gemul, which means 'justified repayment', or the giving of reward and punishment.

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.^[5][6]

In Modern Hebrew, the frequency of usage of gimel, out of all the letters, is 1.26%.

Syriac gamal/gomal

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.

Arabic ǧīm

 

an approximation of the main pronunciations of written ⟨ج⟩ in Arabic dialects.

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

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ج‎	ـج‎	ـجـ‎	جـ‎

Pronunciation

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.

Egyptians always use the letter to represent [ɡ] as well as in names and loanwords, such as جولف "golf". However, ج may be used in Egypt to transcribe /ʒ~d͡ʒ/ (normally pronounced [ʒ]) or if there is a need to distinguish them completely, then چ is used to represent /ʒ/, which is also a proposal for Mehri and Soqotri languages.

The literary standard pronunciations

• [d͡ʒ]: In most of the Arabian Peninsula, Algeria, Iraq, Levant. This is also the commonly taught pronunciation outside the Arabic speaking countries when Literary Arabic is taught as a foreign language.
• [ʒ]: In the Levant, Southern Iraqi Arabic and Northwestern Africa.
• [g]: In Egypt, coastal Yemen (West and South), southwestern Oman, and eastern Oman.
• [ɟ]: In Sudan and hinterland Yemen, as well as being a common reconstruction of the Classical Arabic pronunciation.

Non-literary pronunciation

• [j]: In eastern Arabian Peninsula in the most colloquial speech, however [d͡ʒ] or sometimes [ʒ] to pronounce Literary Arabic loan words.

Historical pronunciation

While in all 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) which is the homeland of the Arabic language, 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:

Language / Dialects	Pronunciation of the letters
	ج	ق
Proto-Semitic	[g]	[kʼ]
Parts of Southern Arabia^1	[g]	[q]
Most of the Arabian Peninsula	[d͡ʒ]^2	[g]
Modern Standard Arabic	[d͡ʒ]^3	[q]^4

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. [ʒ] is an allophone in eastern Arabia.
3. Actually, the [d͡ʒ] variant is the preferred pronunciation when taught outside of Arabic speaking countries where the local variant of ج is accepted as the standard, namely [d͡ʒ], [ʒ], [ɟ], or [ɡ].
4. In Sanaa, [ɡ] is used as the literary standard for ق, whereas the literary standard pronunciation in Sudan is [ɢ] or [ɡ].

Character encodings

Character information

Preview	ג		ج		گ		ܓ		ࠂ		ℷ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER GIMEL		ARABIC LETTER JEEM		ARABIC LETTER GAF		SYRIAC LETTER GAMAL		SAMARITAN LETTER GAMAN		GIMEL SYMBOL
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1490	U+05D2	1580	U+062C	1711	U+06AF	1811	U+0713	2050	U+0802	8503	U+2137
UTF-8	215 146	D7 92	216 172	D8 AC	218 175	DA AF	220 147	DC 93	224 160 130	E0 A0 82	226 132 183	E2 84 B7
Numeric character reference	ג	ג	ج	ج	گ	گ	ܓ	ܓ	ࠂ	ࠂ	ℷ	ℷ
Named character reference											ℷ

Character information

Preview	𐎂		𐡂		𐤂
Unicode name	UGARITIC LETTER GAMLA		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER GIMEL		PHOENICIAN LETTER GAML
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	66434	U+10382	67650	U+10842	67842	U+10902
UTF-8	240 144 142 130	F0 90 8E 82	240 144 161 130	F0 90 A1 82	240 144 164 130	F0 90 A4 82
UTF-16	55296 57218	D800 DF82	55298 56386	D802 DC42	55298 56578	D802 DD02
Numeric character reference	𐎂	𐎂	𐡂	𐡂	𐤂	𐤂

See also

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

References

1. Russell, Bertrand (1972). A history of western philosophy (60th print. ed.). New York: Touchstone book. ISBN 9780671314002.
2. Stan Tenen - Meru Foundation. "Meru Foundation Research: Letter Portrait: Gimel". meru.org.
3. Powell, Barry B. (27 March 2009). Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization. Wiley Blackwell. p. 182. ISBN 978-1405162562.
4. Ginzburgh, Yitzchak; Trugman, Avraham Arieh; Wisnefsky, Moshe Yaakov (1991). The Alef-beit: Jewish Thought Revealed Through the Hebrew Letters. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 42, 389. ISBN 9780876685181.
5. "Mass Rally for United Torah Judaism - Hamodia.com". Hamodia. 11 March 2015.
6. "Gedolim at Special Conference Call to Strengthen UTJ to Uphold Torah, Shabbos and Religious Character - Hamodia.com". Hamodia. 1 April 2019.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gimel (letter).

• The Mystical Significance of the Hebrew Letters: Gimel