Shin (letter)

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← Qoph               Shin               Taw →
Phoenician Hebrew Aramaic Syriac Arabic
Shin שׂ,שׁ Shin ܫ ﺷ,ﺵ
Phonemic representation (IPA): ʃ / s
Position in alphabet: 21
Numerical (Gematria/Abjad) value: 300

Shin (also spelled Šin or Sheen) is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew שׂ, and Arabic šīn ﺵ (in abjadi order, 12th in modern order).

Its sound value is a voiceless sibilant, IPA: [ʃ] or /s/.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Sigma (Σ), Latin S, and Cyrillic letters Es (С) and Sha (Ш), and may have inspired the form of the letter Sha in the Glagolitic alphabet.

Contents

[edit] Origins

Phoenician alphabet
(1050 BCE–unknown)
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
(1000 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
v • d • e

The Proto-Sinaitic glyph, and possibly its Proto-Canaanite descendant glyph, according to William Albright and Brian Colless, may have been based on the hieroglyph for the uraeus in Semitic called shamash "sun" (also the meaning of the rune Sigel) with a phonetic value IPA: [ʃ]:

N6

.

The Phoenician šin letter expressed the continuants of two Proto-Semitic phonemes, and may have been based on a pictogram of a tooth (in modern Hebrew shen). The Encyclopedia Judaica, 1972, records that it originally represented a composite bow.

The history of the letters expressing sibilants in the various Semitic alphabets is a bit complicated, due to different mergers between Proto-Semitic phonemes. As usually reconstructed, there are five Proto-Semitic phonemes that evolved into various voiceless sibilants in daughter languages, as follows:

Proto-Semitic Akkadian Arabic Canaanite Hebrew Aramaic Ge'ez
š s̠ س s š שׁ š שׁ š ሰ s
s s س s s ס s ס s ሰ s
ṣ ṣ ص ṣ ṣ צ ṣ צ ṣ ጸ ṣ
ś s̠ ش š š š שׂ s שׂ s ሠ ś
ṣ́ ṣ ض ḍ ṣ ṣ צ ṣ ע ʿ ፀ ṣ́

[edit] Hebrew Shin / Sin

The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: an alveolar sibilant, IPA /s/ like English a palato-alveolar sibilant, /ʃ/ like English shoe. The two are distinguished by a dot above the left-hand side of the letter for /s/ and above the right-hand side for /ʃ/. The Hebrew /s/ version according to the reconstruction shown above is descended from Proto-Semitic ś, a phoneme thought to correspond to a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/, similar to Welsh Ll in "Llandudno".

See also Hebrew phonology, Śawt.

Name Symbol IPA Transliteration Example
Sin dot (left) שׂ /s/ s sour
Shin dot (right) שׁ /ʃ/ sh shop

[edit] Significance

In gematria, Shin represents the number 300.

Shin, as a prefix, bears the same meaning as the relative pronouns "that", "which" and "who" in English. In colloquial Hebrew, Kaph and Shin together have the meaning of "when". This is a contraction of כּאשר, ka'asher (when).

Shin is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See Gimmel, Ayin, Teth, Nun, Zayin, and Tzadi.

According to Judges 12:6, the tribe of Ephraim could not differentiate between Shin and Sin; when the Gileadites were at war with the Ephraimites, they would ask suspected Ephraimites to say the word shibolet; an Ephraimite would say sibolet and thus be exposed. From this episode we get the English word Shibboleth.

[edit] In Judaism

Shin also stands for the word Shaddai, a name for God. Because of this, a kohen (priest) forms the letter Shin with his hands as he recites the Priestly Blessing. In the mid 1960s, actor Leonard Nimoy used a single-handed version of this gesture to create the Vulcan Hand Salute for his character, Mr. Spock, on Star Trek.

In Jewish tradition the letter Shin is inscribed on the Mezuzah, a vessel which houses a scroll of parchment with Biblical text written on it. The text contained in the Mezuzah is the Shema Yisrael prayer, which calls the Israelites to love their God with all their heart, soul and strength. The mezuzah is situated upon all the doorframes in a home or establishment. Sometimes the whole word Shaddai will be written.

The Shema Yisrael prayer also commands the Israelites to write God's commandments on their hearts (Deut. 6:6); the shape of the letter Shin mimics the structure of the human heart: the lower, larger left ventricle (which supplies the full body) and the smaller right ventricle (which supplies the lungs) are positioned like the lines of the letter Shin.

A religious significance has been applied to the fact that there are three valleys which comprise the city of Jersualem's geography: the Valley of Ben Hinnom, Tyropoeon Valley, and Kidron Valley, and that these valleys converge to also form the shape of the letter shin, and that the Temple in Jerusalem is located where the dagesh (horizontal line) is.

In the Sefer Yetzirah the letter Shin is King over Fire, Formed Heaven in the Universe, Hot in the Year, and the Head in the Soul.

[edit] Sayings with Shin

The Shin-Bet was an old acronym for the Israeli Department of Internal General Security.

A Shin-Shin Clash is Israeli military parlance for a battle between two tank divisions (tank in Hebrew is shiryon).

Sh'at haShin (The Shin Hour) is the last possible moment for any action, usually military. Corresponds to the English expression the eleventh hour.

[edit] Arabic sīn / shīn

[edit] Arabic sīn

The letter has developed into two forms; one is named sīn, representing /s/ and is the 12th letter of the Arabic alphabet and is written thus:

Position
Isolated Initial Medial Final
س سـ‍ ـسـ ـس

Sīn is used as a future marker, added to imperfective/present tense verbs to indicate that they will happen in the future: for instance يكتب yaktub ("he writes") → سيكتب sayaktub ("he will write"). The term is a shortened form of the word سوف sawfa ("will"). Sawfa is not much used outside of very formal language, and many dialects use sounds other than sīn to indicate future tense; for instance, Egyptian Arabic uses one of the two "h" sounds: hā' هـ or ḥā' حـ, almost idiolectically.

[edit] Arabic shīn

The other Arabic letter derived from Shin is shīn representing ʃ, and is the 13th letter of the Arabic alphabet and is written thus:

Position
Isolated Initial Medial Final
ش شـ‍ ـشـ ـش
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