Information About

Zayin




Zayin (also spelled '''Zain''' or '''Zayn''') is the seventh letter of many Semitic Abjads , including Phoenician , Aramaic , Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic Alphabet . It represents a Voiced Alveolar Fricative , IPA .

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. The Proto-Sinaitic glyph according to Brian Colless may have been called ''ziqq'', based on a Hieroglyph depicting a "manacle".


ARABIC ZAYN


The letter is named ''zaynʼ'', and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:
.

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 .
is ژ /ʒ/, used in e.g. the Uyghur Language (see K̡ona Yezik ).


HEBREW ZAYIN


An apostrophe can be placed in front of Zayin ('ז), making it represent .


Significance

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 . See Shin , Ayin , Teth , Nun , Gimel , and Tzadi .