Back Ayin Breton Ayin Catalan Ayin CEB ʿAyn Spanish Ayin Basque ع Persian Ajin Finnish Ayin ID Ajin Italian Ајин (буква) Macedonian
| Ayin | |
|---|---|
| Phoenician | 𐤏 |
| Hebrew | ע |
| Aramaic | 𐡏 |
| Syriac | ܥ |
| Arabic | ع |
| Phonemic representation | ʕ, (ʔ) |
| Position in alphabet | 16 |
| Numerical value | 70 |
| Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician | |
| Greek | Ο, Ω |
| Latin | O |
| Cyrillic | О, Ѡ |
Ayin (also ayn or ain; transliterated ⟨ʿ⟩) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Arabic ʿayn ع, Aramaic ʿē 𐡏, Hebrew ʿayin ע, Phoenician ʿayin 𐤏, and Syriac ʿē ܥ (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only).[note 1]
The letter represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative (/ʕ/) or a similarly articulated consonant. In some Semitic languages and dialects, the phonetic value of the letter has changed, or the phoneme has been lost altogether (thus, in the revived Modern Hebrew it is reduced to a glottal stop or is omitted entirely in part due to European influence).
The Phoenician letter is the origin of the Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letters O, O and O.
The Arabic character is the origin of the Latin-script letter Ƹ.
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