Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml Phoenician gimel.svg, Hebrew ˈGimel ג, Aramaic Gāmal Gimel.svg, Syriac Gāmal ܓ, and Arabic ǧīm ج (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order). Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, save Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive [ɡ]; in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents either a /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/ for most Arabic speakers except in Lower Egypt, the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of Oman where it is pronounced as a voiced velar plosive [ɡ], see below and also Persian Gaf گ.
In its unattested Proto-Canaanite form, the letter may have been named after a weapon that was either a staff sling or a throwing stick, ultimately deriving from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek gamma (Γ), the Latin C and G, and the Cyrillic Г.
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