Ghayn

History

Proto-Semitic sem (usually reconstructed as voiced velar fricative or voiced uvular fricative ) merged with ʻayn in most Semitic languages except for Arabic, Ugaritic and older varieties of the Canaanite languages. The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for sem, . Biblical Hebrew, as of the 3rd century BCE, apparently still distinguished the phonemes sem and sem , based on transcriptions in the Septuagint, such as that of the name "Gomorrah" as Gomorrha (Γόμορρᾰ) for the Hebrew ‘Ămōrā (עֲמֹרָה). Canaanite languages, including Hebrew, later also merged sem with ʻayin, and the merger was complete in Tiberian Hebrew.

Usage

The letter ar (غ) is preferred in the Levant (nowadays), and by Aljazeera TV channel, to represent , e.g., هونغ كونغ (Hong Kong), البرتغال (Portugal), أغسطس (August), and غاندالف (Gandalf). Foreign publications and TV channels in Arabic, e.g. Deutsche Welle, and Alhurra, follow this practice. It is then often pronounced , not , though in many cases, غ is pronounced in loanwords as expected (, not ).

Other letters can be used to transcribe in loanwords and names, depending on whether the local variety of Arabic in the country has the phoneme , and if it does, which letter represents it and whether it is customary in the country to use that letter to transcribe . For instance, in Egypt, where ج is pronounced as in all situations even in Modern Standard Arabic (except in certain contexts, such as reciting the Qur'an), ج is used to transcribe foreign in all contexts. The same applies to coastal Yemen, as well as Oman. In Algeria and Tunisia, it is ar () or a three-dotted qāf (); the Arabian peninsula, it is ar (). In Iraq, gaf () or kaf () is more used. In Morocco, a three-dotted kāf () or kāf () is used. In Lebanon and Israel, a three-dotted jīm () is often used to create the phoneme in names and foreign loanwords, such as in چامبيا (Gambia).

When representing the sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ע׳ or ר׳‎. In English, the letter غ in Arabic names is usually transliterated as ar, ar, or simply g: بغداد ar 'Baghdad', قرغيزستان ar 'Kyrgyzstan', سنغافورة ar 'Singapore', or غزة ar 'Gaza', the last of which does not render the sound ~ accurately. The closest equivalent sound to be known to most English-speakers is the Parisian French "r" . The Maltese alphabet is written in the Latin alphabet, the only Semitic language to do so in its standard form, and uses ⟨g⟩. It is usually represented as voiced velar plosive.

Turkish ğ, which in modern speech has no sound of its own (similar to the soft g in Danish and the hard and the soft signs in Russian), used to be spelled as غ in the Ottoman script and pronounced as . Other Turkic languages also use this Latin equivalent of ghayn (ğ), such as Tatar (Cyrillic: г), which pronounces it as [ʁ], and Azerbaijani (Cyrillic: ғ, Perso-Arabic: غ), which pronounces it as . In Arabic words and names where there is an ayin, Tatar adds the ghayn instead (عبد الله, ʻAbd Allāh, ’Abdullah; Tatar: Ğabdulla*,* Габдулла; Yaña imlâ: غابدوللا /ʁabdulla/).

Related characters

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

Character encodings

|063A|name1=Arabic Letter Ghain |FECD|name2=Arabic Letter Ghain isolated form |FECE|name3=Arabic Letter Ghain final form |FECF|name4=Arabic Letter Ghain initial form |FED0|name5=Arabic Letter Ghain medial form |06A0|name1=Arabic Letter Ain With Three Dots Above |075D|name2=Arabic Letter Ain With Two Dots Above |08B3|name3=Arabic Letter Ain With Three Dots Below

Notes

References

References

1. "Leningrad لينينغراد spelled with غ rather than ج".
2. ""Blogger" بلوغر is spelled with غ, not ج about an article on Egypt quoting an Egyptian official Facebook post spelling it بلوجر with ج".
3. al Nassir, Abdulmunʿim Abdulamir. (1985). "Sibawayh the Phonologist". University of New York.
4. Lewis, Geoffrey: ''Turkish Grammar: Second Edition'', pp. 4–5. New York: Oxford University Press Inc, 2011. {{ISBN. 978-0-19-870036-4
5. "Tatar (Standard)".
6. "Quranic Names – Abdullah".
7. "Tatar Names".
8. Ilya, Yevlampiev. (2011). "Title: Revised Proposal to encode Arabic characters used for Bashkir, Belarusian, Crimean Tatar, and Tatar languages".