Ayin

Arabic ʿayn

The Arabic letter ﻉ ﻋَﻴْﻦْ ʿayn 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 ح. 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 ʿayn 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 غ.

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 ح and ض 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 ghayn (غ), 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 ()

Wolof ngōn

In the Wolofal alphabet, for writing Wolof in Arabic script, the letter ngōn is used, and it is thus written as:

This letter is also derived from the letter ʿayn, via the derived letter ghayn. It represents .

Tamil nga

This letter is also derived from the letter ʿayn, via the derived letter ghayn, with three dots inside the descender, to represent in the Arwi script used for Tamil.

Related characters

For the related characters, see ng (Arabic letter) and ghayn.

Hebrew ayin

Hebrew spelling: עַיִן

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 יַעֲקֹב (yaʿăqōḇ, "Jacob") and מַעֲשֶׂה (maʿăse, "story"), but in other cases, the nasal has disappeared and been replaced by /j/, such as /ˈmajsə/ and /ˈmajrəv/ from Hebrew מַעֲשֶׂה and מַעֲרָב (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.

Significance

In gematria, ʿayin represents the number 70.

ʿayin is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns (called tagin) when written in a sefer Torah.

Syriac e

Transliteration

In Semitic philology, there is a long-standing tradition of rendering Semitic ayin with the Greek rough breathing mark ⟨῾⟩ (e.g. ῾arab عَرَب Arabs). Depending on typography, this could look similar to either an articulate single opening quotation mark ⟨ʻ⟩ (e.g. ʻarab عَرَب). or as a raised semi-circle open to the right ⟨ʿ⟩ (e.g. ʿarab عَرَب).

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 ⟨ʿ⟩ and alef ⟨ʾ⟩ 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 ⟨ʻ⟩ (for Hebrew) or left single quotation mark ⟨‘⟩ (for Arabic).

The symbols for the corresponding phonemes in the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨ʕ⟩ for voiced pharyngeal fricative (ayin) and ⟨ʔ⟩ 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 ʿirāq عراق, Arab ʿarab عرب, Saudi suʿūdī سعودي, etc.; Afula ʿăfūlā עֲפוּלָה, Arad ʿărād עֲרָד, 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.

Unicode

In Unicode, the recommended character for the transliteration of ayin is U+02BF ʿ MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING (a character in the Spacing Modifier Letters range, even though it is here not used as a modifier letter but as a full grapheme). This convention has been adopted by ISO 233-2 (1993) for Arabic and ISO 259-2 (1994) for Hebrew.

There are a number of alternative Unicode characters in use, some of which are easily confused or even considered equivalent in practice:

• U+1FFE ῾ GREEK DASIA, the character used to represent Greek rough breathing,
• U+02BD ʽ MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA,
• U+2018 ‘ LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK,
• U+02BB ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA,
• U+0060 ` GRAVE ACCENT, from its use as single opening quotation mark in ASCII environments, used for ayin in ArabTeX.

Letters used to represent ayin:

• a superscript "c" (U+1D9C ᶜ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL C),
• the IPA symbol for pharyngealization (U+02C1 MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED GLOTTAL STOP or U+02E4 ˤ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL REVERSED GLOTTAL STOP) or ^ʕ, a superscript U+0295 LATIN LETTER PHARYNGEAL VOICED FRICATIVE, the IPA symbol for voiced pharyngeal fricative,

The phonemes corresponding to alef and ayin in Ancient Egyptian are by convention transliterated by more distinctive signs: Egyptian alef is rendered by two semi-circles open to the left, stacked vertically, and Egyptian ayin is rendered by a single full-width semi-circle open to the right. These characters were introduced in Unicode in version 5.1 (2008, Latin Extended-D range), U+A723 ꜣ LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF and U+A725 ꜥ LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL AIN.

Character encodings