Ayin

In Unicode, the recommended character for the transliteration of ayin is ʿ (U+02BF) "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).[note 3] 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:[3]

• ̔ (U+0314 combining reversed comma above), the character recommended to represent Greek rough breathing),
• single opening quotation mark ‘ (U+2018),[note 4]
• ʻ (U+02BB Modifier letter turned comma),
• the grave accent ` U+0060, from its use as single opening quotation mark in ASCII environments, used for ayin in ArabTeX.

Other variants chosen to represent ayin as a full grapheme (rather than a sign suggestive of an apostrophe or a diacritic):

• a superscript c (^c, or ᶜ U+1D9C MODIFIER LETTER SMALL C),
• the IPA symbol for pharyngealization ˤ, ˤ (U+02C1 Modifier letter reversed glottal stop, U+02E4 Modifier letter small reversed glottal stop),[note 5] or a superscript ʕ (^ʕ, U+0295 Latin letter pharyngeal voiced fricative), the IPA symbol for voiced pharyngeal fricative .

It is worth noting that 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), ꜣ U+A723 Latin small letter Egyptological Alef and ꜥ U+A725 Latin small letter Egyptological Ain.

ʿayin has traditionally been described as a voiced pharyngeal fricative ([ʕ]). 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 ([ʢ]),[4] and may also be a pharyngealized glottal stop ([ʔˤ]).

In some historical Sephardi and Ashkenazi pronunciations, ʿayin represented a velar nasal ([ŋ]).[5] 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Hebrew יַעֲקֹב‎ (yaʿăqōḇ, "Jacob") and מַעֲשֶׂה‎ (maʿăse, "story"), but in other cases, the nasal has disappeared and been replaced by /j/, such as /ˈmajsə/ and /ˈmajrəv/ from Hebrew מַעֲשֶׂה‎ and מַעֲרָב‎ (maʿărāḇ, "west").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. As well, it may be used as a shibboleth to identify the social background of a speaker, as Arabs and some of the Mizrahim (mainly of Yemenite origin) 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.

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.

Because the sound is difficult for most non-Arabs to pronounce, it is often used as a shibboleth by Arabic speakers; other sounds, such as Ḥā and Ḍād are also used.

Arabic ʿayn is one of the most common letters in Arabic. Depending on the region, it ranges from a pharyngeal [ʕ] to an epiglottal [ʢ].[4] It is voiced, its unvoiced 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 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.[6]

In the Persian language and other languages using the Persian alphabet, it is pronounced as /ʔ/ (glottal stop), and rarely as /ʁ/ in some languages.

As in Hebrew, the letter originally stood for two sounds, /ʕ/ and /ʁ/. When pointing was developed, the sound /ʁ/ was distinguished with a dot on top (غ‎), to give the letter ghayn. In Maltese, which is written with the Latin alphabet, the digraph għ, called ʿajn, is used to write what was originally the same sound.