- published: 11 Sep 2015
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Ayin or ʿayin (Hebrew: [ajin], Arabic: [ʕajn][see below]) is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew ע and Arabic ʿayn ع (in abjadi order). It is the twenty-first letter in the new Persian alphabet (similar to an o but silent). It represents a sound like a voiced pharyngeal fricative (/ʕ/), which has no equivalent in English.
There are many possible transliterations, most commonly ʿ, U+02BF ʿ modifier letter left half ring (HTML: ʿ
). For details, see section Transliteration.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Omicron (Ο), the Latin O, and Cyrillic (О), all representing vowels.
The sound represented by ayin is common to much of the Afrasiatic language family, such as the Egyptian, Cushitic, and Semitic languages. Some scholars believe that the sound in Proto-Indo-European transcribed h3 was similar, though this is debatable. (See Laryngeal theory#Pronunciation.)
ʿAyin is usually transliterated into the Latin alphabet with ʿ, (U+02BF) "modifier letter left half ring" (in the Spacing Modifier Letters range). This is true in ALA-LC romanization of Arabic. This symbol originated from Semitic romanization and Egyptological transliteration, where it was inspired by the Greek spiritus asper. Example: The name of the letter itself, ʿayin.