Ghayn

The Arabic letter غ (Arabic: غَيْنْ ghayn or ġayn) is the nineteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet, one of the six letters not in the twenty-two akin to the Phoenician alphabet (the others being thāʼ, khāʼ, dhāl, ḍād, ẓāʼ), it represents the sound /ɣ/ or /ʁ/. In name and shape, it is a variant of ʻayn (ع). Its numerical value is 1000 (see Abjad numerals). In the Persian language, it represents [ɣ]~[ɢ] and is the twenty-second letter in the new Persian alphabet.

Ghayn
غ
Usage
Writing system	Arabic script
Type	Abjad
Language of origin	Arabic language
Alphabetical position	19 Numerical value: 1000
History
Development	𓎛 ع غ
Other
Associated numbers	1000

A voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ or a voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ (usually reconstructed for Proto-Semitic) merged with ʻayin in most languages except for Arabic, Ugaritic, and older varieties of the Canaanite languages. Canaanite languages and Hebrew later also merged it with ʻayin, and the merger was complete in Tiberian Hebrew. The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ġ, 𐩶. Biblical Hebrew, as of the 3rd century BCE, apparently still distinguished the phonemes ġ /ʁ/ and ḫ /χ/, based on transcriptions in the Septuagint. For example, Gomorrah is represented in Hebrew as עֲמֹרָה‎, which sounds like ‘Ămōrāh in Modern Hebrew, but the Greek transcription of Γομορραν, Gomoras, suggests that the Hebrew lemma was then still pronounced as Ġămōrāh.

The letter ghayn (غ) is preferred in the Levant (nowadays), and by Aljazeera TV channel to be used to represent /ɡ/ e.g. هونغ كونغ (Hong Kong) and غاندالف (Gandalf). Foreign publications and TV channels in Arabic, e.g. Deutsche Welle,[1] and Alhurra,[2] follow this practice. It is then often pronounced /ɡ/, not /ɣ/, though, in many cases, غ is pronounced in loanwords as expected (/ɣ/, not /ɡ/).

Other letters, such as ج‎ (Egypt/coastal Yemen/southwestern and eastern Oman), ق‎ (Arabian Peninsula, occasionally Sudan/Tunisia/Algeria), ک/ك‎ (traditionally in the Levant/Iraq, occasionally in Morocco), گ‎ (Iraq/occasionally the Levant), ݣ‎ (Morocco) ڨ‎ (Tunisia/Algeria), چ‎ (Israel/Lebanon), can be used to transcribe /ɡ/ in loanwords and names, depending on whether the local variety of Arabic in the country has the phoneme /ɡ/, which letter represents it if it does and on whether it is customary in the country to use that letter to transcribe /ɡ/. For instance, in Egypt, where ج is pronounced as [ɡ] in all situations, even in speaking Modern Standard Arabic (except in certain contexts, such as reciting the Qur'an), ج is used to transcribe foreign [ɡ] in all contexts. The same applies to coastal Yemen, as well as southwestern and eastern Oman.

When representing the sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ע׳.

In English, the letter غ in Arabic names is usually transliterated as ‹gh›, ‹ġ›, or simply ‹g›: بغداد Baghdād 'Baghdad', or غزة Ghazzah 'Gaza', the latter of which does not render the sound [ɣ]~[ʁ] accurately. The closest equivalent sound to be known to most English-speakers is the Parisian French "r" [ʁ].

Ghayn is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

Proto-Semitic	Akkadian	Arabic		Canaanite		Hebrew		Aramaic		South Arabian		Geʻez
ġ	-	غ	gh		ġ, ʻ	ע	ʻ	ע	ʻ		ġ	ዐ	ʻ