Hebrew spelling: גִּימֶל Bertrand Russell posits that the letter's form is a conventionalized image of a camel. 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 ". Gimel is one of the six letters which can receive a dagesh qal. The two functions of dagesh are distinguished as either qal or hazaq. The six letters that can receive a dagesh qal are bet, gimel, daled, kaph, pe, and taf. Three of them 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,, or when with a dagesh, and without a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the combination is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote.
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 alphabetgimel directly precedes dalet, which signifies a poor or 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. Gimel is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns 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. In Modern Hebrew, the frequency of usage of gimel, out of all the letters, is 1.26%.
Syriac Gamal/Gomal
In the Syriac alphabet, the third letter is ܓ — Gamal in eastern pronunciation, Gomal in western pronunciation. It is one of six letters that represent two associated sounds. When Gamal/Gomal has a hard pronunciation it represents, like "goat". When Gamal/Gomal has a soft pronunciation it traditionally represents , or Ghamal/Ghomal. The letter, renamed Jamal/Jomal, 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 to write loan and foreign words from Arabic or Persian.
Arabic ǧīm
The Arabic letter ج is named جيم ǧīm. It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: In most Modern Standard Arabic registers and languages that use the Arabic script The standard pronunciation taught outside the Arabic speaking world is an affricate, which was the agreed upon pronunciation by the end of the nineteenth century to recite the Qur'an. It is pronounced as a fricative in most of Northern Africa and the Levant, and is the prestigious and most common pronunciation in Egypt which is also found in Southern Arabian Peninsula. Differences in pronunciation occur because speakers of Modern Standard Arabic pronounce words in accordance to their spoken variety of Arabic. In such varieties, cognate words will have consistent differences in pronunciation of the letter: The three main pronunciations:
: In most of the Arabian Peninsula, Algeria, Iraq, some parts of the Levant. However, in Algeria and the Arabian Peninsula, it may be softened to in some environments.
: The standard pronunciation in Egypt, parts of Yemen, and southwestern Oman, also in Soqotri language, as in Hebrew and the other Semitic languages. This pronunciation also exists colloquially in Northwestern Africa in words that contain grooved alveolar sounds but not to pronounce Literary Arabic.
Other pronunciations:
: In some regions of Sudan and Yemen, as well as being a common reconstruction of the Classical Arabic pronunciation.
: In eastern Arabian Peninsula in the most colloquial speech but or sometimes to pronounce Literary Arabic loan words.
Egyptians always use the letter to represent as well as in names and loanwords, such as جولف "golf". However, ج may be used in Egypt to transcribe ~ or if there is a need to differentiate between them completely then چ can be used instead to represent, which is also a proposal for Mehri and Soqotri languages.
Palatalization
While in most Semitic languages, e.g. Aramaic, Hebrew, Ge'ez, Old South Arabian the Gimel represents a, Arabic is considered unique among them where the Gimel or Jīm was palatalized to an affricate or a fricative in most dialects from classical times. While there is variation in Modern Arabic varieties, most of them reflect this palatalized pronunciation except in Egyptian Arabic and a number of Yemeni and Omani dialects, where it is pronounced as due to their substrate languages being Old South Arabian languages. It is not well known when this change occurred or the probability of it being connected to the pronunciation of Qāf as a, but in most of the Arabian peninsula which is the homeland of the Arabic language, the represents a and represents a, except in western and southern Yemen and southern Oman where represents a and represents a, which shows a strong correlation between the palatalization of to and the pronunciation of the as a as shown in the table below: Notes:
Coastal Yemen and southern Oman.
can be an allophone in some dialects.
in most Modern Standard Arabic registers is pronouned or, but in Egypt, Yemen, and Sudan.
Ethiopian/Sudanese Gimel
The dialect of Eastern Africa often utilizes the gimel sofit when the gimel ends a word. The letter is a traditional gimel with an add-on curve on the bottom.
