Shin (letter)

← Resh Shin Taw →
Phoenician Hebrew ש Aramaic Syriac ܫ Arabic ش,ش
Phonemic representation	ʃ (s)
Position in alphabet	21
Numerical value	300
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Greek Σ Latin S Cyrillic С Ш

Shin (also spelled Šin (šīn) or Sheen) literally means "teeth", "press", and "sharp"; It is the twenty-first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Shin , Hebrew Shin ש, Aramaic Shin , Syriac Shin ܫ, and Arabic Shin ش‎ (in abjadi order, 13th in modern order). Its sound value is a voiceless sibilant, [ʃ] or [s].

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Sigma (Σ) (which in turn gave Latin S and Cyrillic С), and the letter Sha in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts (, Ш).

The South Arabian and Ethiopian letter Śawt is also cognate.

Origins

Egyptian hieroglyph	Proto-Sinaitic	Phoenician	Paleo-Hebrew

The Proto-Sinaitic glyph, according to William Albright, was based on a "Tooth" and with the phonemic value š "corresponds etymologically (in part, at least) to original Semitic ṯ (th), which was pronounced s in South Canaanite".^[1]

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 Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1972, records that it originally represented a composite bow.

The history of the letters expressing sibilants in the various Semitic alphabets is somewhat 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		Paleo Hebrew		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	שׂ	s	שׂ or ס	s	ሠ	ś
ṣ́	ṣ	ض‎	ḍ		ṣ	צ	ṣ	ע	ʿ	ፀ	ṣ́

Hebrew Shin / Sin

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ש	ש	ש

Hebrew spelling: שִׁין

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.

Sin and Shin Dot

Sin and Shin dot
שׁ שׂ
IPA	s, ʃ
Transliteration	s, sh
English example	sought, shot
Sin Dot
יִשְׂרָאֵל
The word Israel in Hebrew, Yisrael. The upper left hand dot on the Sin is a Sin dot.
Shin Dot
יֵשׁ
The Hebrew word yesh, there is. The upper right hand dot on the Shin is a Shin dot.
Other niqqud
Shva · Hiriq · Zeire · Segol · Patach · Kamatz · Holam · Dagesh · Mappiq · Shuruk · Kubutz · Rafe · Sin/Shin Dot

The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a sibilant /s/, like English sour, and a /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/. In the biblical name Issachar (Hebrew: יִשָּׂשכָר) only, the second sin/shin letter is always written without any dot, even in fully vocalized texts.

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

Unicode encoding

Glyph	Unicode	Name
ׁ	U+05C1	SHIN DOT
ׂ	U+05C2	SIN DOT

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 (as, when).

Shin is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns (called 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 Samekh; 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.

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.^[2][3]

The letter Shin is often inscribed on the case containing a mezuzah, 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 that comprise the city of Jerusalem'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. This is seen as a fulfillment of passages such as Deuteronomy 16:2 that instructs Jews to celebrate the Pasach at "the place the LORD will choose as a dwelling for his Name" (NIV).

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.

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 ("armour" in Hebrew is שִׁרְיוֹן - 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.

Arabic šīn/sīn

In the Arabic alphabet, šīn is at the original (21st) position in Abjadi order. A letter variant sīn takes the place of Samekh at 15th position.

In Modern Standard Arabic, initial sīn-fatḥa (though, normally diacritics are omitted) (سَـ, pronounced /sa-/) is used as a prefix to imperfective verbs to indicate the future tense. Arab grammarians generally consider this prefix to be an abbreviation of سوف sawfa, meaning (in this sense) "will." Thus سَـ sa- prefixed to يكتب yaktub ("he writes") becomes سيكتب sayaktub ("he will write").

sīn represents /s/. It is the 12th letter of the modern alphabet order and is written thus:

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form:	س‎	ـس‎	ـسـ‎	سـ‎

šīn represents /ʃ/, and is the 13th letter of the modern alphabet order and is written thus:

Position in word:	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form:	ش‎	ـش‎	ـشـ‎	شـ‎

The Arabic letter shin was an acronym for "something" meaning the unknown in algebraic equations. In the transcription into Spanish, the Greek letter chi (χ) was used which was later transcribed into Latin x. According to some sources, this is the origin of <x> used for the unknown in the equations.^[4][5]

Aramaic Shin/Sin

In Aramaic, where the use of shin is well-determined, the orthography of sin was never fully resolved.

To express an etymological /ś/, a number of dialects chose either sin or samek exclusively, where other dialects switch freely between them (often 'leaning' more often towards one or the other). For example:^[6]

ʿaśar "ten"	Old Aramaic	Imperial Aramaic	Middle Aramaic	Palestinian Aramaic	Babylonian Aramaic
עשר	Syrian Inscriptions	Idumaean Ostraca, Egyptian, Egyptian-Persian, Ezra	Qumran	Galilean	Gaonic, Jewish Babylonian Aramaic
עסר	Tell Halaf	(none recorded)	Palmyrene, Syriac	Zoar, Christian Palestinian Aramaic	Mandaic
both	(none recorded)	(none recorded)	(none recorded)	Targum Jehonathan, Original Manuscript Archival Texts, Palestinian Targum (Genizah), Samaritan	Late Jewish Literary Aramaic

Regardless of how it is written, /ś/ in spoken Aramaic seems to have universally resolved to /s/.

Character encodings

Character	ש		س		ش		ܫ		שׁ		שׂ		שּׁ		שּׂ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER SHIN		ARABIC LETTER SEEN		ARABIC LETTER SHEEN		SYRIAC LETTER SHIN		HEBREW LETTER SHIN WITH SHIN DOT		HEBREW LETTER SHIN WITH SIN DOT		HEBREW LETTER SHIN WITH DAGESH AND SHIN DOT		HEBREW LETTER SHIN WITH DAGESH AND SIN DOT
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1513	U+05E9	1587	U+0633	1588	U+0634	1835	U+072B	64298	U+FB2A	64299	U+FB2B	64300	U+FB2C	64301	U+FB2D
UTF-8	215 169	D7 A9	216 179	D8 B3	216 180	D8 B4	220 171	DC AB	239 172 170	EF AC AA	239 172 171	EF AC AB	239 172 172	EF AC AC	239 172 173	EF AC AD
Numeric character reference	ש	ש	س	س	ش	ش	ܫ	ܫ	שׁ	שׁ	שׂ	שׂ	שּׁ	שּׁ	שּׂ	שּׂ

Character	ࠔ		𐎘		𐡔		𐤔
Unicode name	SAMARITAN LETTER SHAN		UGARITIC LETTER SHEN		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER SHIN		PHOENICIAN LETTER SHIN
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	2068	U+0814	66456	U+10398	67668	U+10854	67860	U+10914
UTF-8	224 160 148	E0 A0 94	240 144 142 152	F0 90 8E 98	240 144 161 148	F0 90 A1 94	240 144 164 148	F0 90 A4 94
UTF-16	2068	0814	55296 57240	D800 DF98	55298 56404	D802 DC54	55298 56596	D802 DD14
Numeric character reference	ࠔ	ࠔ	𐎘	𐎘	𐡔	𐡔	𐤔	𐤔

References

1. Albright, 1948: 15
2. Star Trek: The Original Series, episode #30 "Amok Time" (production #34), and "I Am Not Spock", Leonard Nimoy, 1977.
3. Nimoy, Leonard (Narrator) (February 6, 2014). Live Long and Prosper: The Jewish Story Behind Spock, Leonard Nimoy's Star Trek Character. Yiddish Book Center. Retrieved February 27, 2015.
4. Terry Moore: Why is 'x' the unknown?
5. Online Etymological Dictionary
6. The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon

• Albright, W. F., "The Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from Sinai and their Decipherment," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 110 (1948): 6-22.

External links