Ghain

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ghain in isolated form
connected shapes
ـغ ـغـ غـ
from the right both sides to the left

Ghain ( Arabic غين, DMG Ġain ) is the 19th letter of the Arabic alphabet . The numerical value 1000 is assigned to it. Ghain is a diacritical variant of the 18th letter ʿAin (ع).

Emergence

Unlike most other Arabic letters, the Ghain did not emerge directly from a Phoenician letter. In the early days of the Arabic language, the diacritical points were still missing, Ghain was written exactly like the ʿAin . A point was later added to the Ghain to distinguish the two letters.

Sound value and transcription

The Ghain is as voiced velar or uvular fricative to realize ( [⁠ ɣ ⁠] ~ [⁠ ʁ ⁠] ) and thus corresponds approximately to the "nib-R" NHG the standard pronunciation. It can be clearly distinguished from the "tongue R" that occurs in some dialects, as this sound is also present in Arabic in the form of Ra . In Persian, is also the debate as voiced uvular plosive ( [⁠ ɢ ⁠] ) found.

In the DMG inscription, the Ghain is given as g with a point above it ( ġ ). In non-scientific transcription, “gh” is mostly used.

Graphic modifications

Occasionally, in Arabic lexicons, atlases etc. a ghain with three instead of one point can be found. This letterڠserves to represent sounds that do not appear in the classical pronunciation of Arabic , in Maghrebian Arabic for the sound "g", in the Malay language for the sound " ŋ ". Depending on the context, it is referred to as gain or nga .

Ghain in Unicode

Unicode codepoint U + 063A
Unicode name ARABIC LETTER GHAIN
HTML & # 1594;
ISO 8859-6 0xda