Contents |
| ← Waw Zayin Heth → | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phoenician | Hebrew | Aramaic | Syriac | Arabic |
 |
ז |  |
ܙ | ﺯ |
| Alphabetic derivatives |
Greek | Latin | Cyrillic | |
| Ζ | Z | З | ||
| Phonemic representation: | z | |||
| Position in alphabet: | 7 | |||
| Numerical (Gematria/Abjad) value: | 7 | |||
Zayin (also spelled Zain or Zayn or simply Zay) is the seventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician 𐤆, Aramaic , Hebrew ז, Syriac ܙ and Arabic alphabet ﺯ [zāī]. It represents a voiced alveolar fricative, IPA /z/.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Zeta (Ζ), Etruscan z 
, Latin Z, and Cyrillic Ze З.
The Proto-Canaanite glyph appears to be named after a sword or other weapon. (In Hebrew, "Zayin" means sword, and the verb "Lezayen" means to arm). The Proto-Sinaitic glyph according to Brian Colless may have been called ziqq, based on a hieroglyph depicting a "manacle".
| Phoenician alphabet (ca. 1050–200 BCE) |
| 𐤀 𐤁 𐤂 𐤃 𐤄 𐤅 |
| 𐤆 𐤇 𐤈 𐤉 𐤊 𐤋 |
| 𐤌 𐤍 𐤎 𐤏 𐤐 |
| 𐤑 𐤒 𐤓 𐤔 𐤕 |
| Semitic abjads · Genealogy |
| Hebrew alphabet (400 BCE–present) |
| א ב ג ד ה ו |
| ז ח ט י כך |
| ל מם נן ס ע פף |
| צץ ק ר ש ת |
| History · Transliteration Niqqud · Dagesh · Gematria Cantillation · Numeration |
| Syriac alphabet (200 BCE–present) |
| ܐ ܒ ܓ ܕ ܗ ܘ |
| ܙ ܚ ܛ ܝ ܟܟ ܠ |
| ܡܡ ܢܢ ܣ ܥ ܦ |
| ܨ ܩ ܪ ܫ ܬ |
| Arabic alphabet (400 CE–present) |
| ا ب ت ث ج ح |
| خ د ذ ر ز س |
| ش ص ض ط ظ ع |
| غ ف ق ك ل |
| م ن ه و ي |
| History · Transliteration Diacritics · Hamza ء Numerals · Numeration |
| Orthographic variants | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Various Print Fonts | Cursive Hebrew | Rashi Script | ||
| Serif | Sans-serif | Monospaced | ||
| ז | ז | ז |  |
 |
In modern Hebrew, the combination ז׳ (zayin followed by a geresh) is used in loanwords and foreign names to denote [ʒ] as in vision.
In gematria, Zayin represents the number seven, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 7000 (i.e. זתשנד in numbers would be the date 7754).
Zayin is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah.
In Modern Hebrew, Zayin may also mean penis in a rude or informal way. It is one of several Hebrew letters that have an additional meaning as a noun. The others are: Bet [the second letter] whose name is a grammatical form of the word for "house"; Vav [the sixth letter] whose name means "hook"; Kaf [the eleventh letter] whose name means "palm [of the hand]"; Ayin [the sixteenth letter] whose name means "eye"; Pe [the seventeenth letter] whose name means "mouth"; Qof [the nineteenth letter] whose name means "monkey"; Shin [the twenty-first letter] whose name means "tooth"; Tav [the twenty-second letter] whose name means "mark"; and several other Hebrew letters whose namest are ancient Hebrew forms of nouns still used, with a slight change of form or pronunciation, as nouns in modern Hebrew.)
Zain is a consant with the "z" sound which is a voiced alveolar fricative.
The letter is named, variously, zaynʼ, zāi, and za', and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
| Position in word: | Isolated | Initial | Medial | Final |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form of letter: | ز | (None) | (None) | ـز |
The similarity to ر is likely a function of the original Syriac forms converging to a single symbol, requiring that one of them be distinguished as a dot; a similar process occurred to ǧim and ḥa'.
A variant of Arabic ﺯ. is ژ /ʒ/, used in Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu and Uyghur (see K̡ona Yezik̡). This is also used to transliterate words of foreign origin, mostly French, in Levantine[citation needed] and Maghrebi Arabic[citation needed] dialects.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Contents |
ז (spelled zayin)
ז
|
|
Wikis
Search
