By Carl Kenner
Remember how the "ay" meaning "what" looked? This is "il shaay", which you learnt means "the tea".
The Arabic letter J looks like the English letter J but backwards. Only it is a cross between a capital J and a lowercase j. It has the stroke across the top of a capital J, and also the dot of the lowercase j. The dot goes INSIDE the J rather than on top.
ﺞ ﺝ
You may have heard some people say there was no J sound in Arabic. Actually there is no J sound in the EGYPTIAN dialect, but the other dialects all have a normal English J sound. For example the Hajj means the famous pilgrimage to Mecca. Jihad means crusade (in any sense of the word) or literally "The Struggle". So there is definately a J in Arabic, and this is it.
In Egypt the J is pronounced like the letter G instead. So they say "Hagg" and "Gihad". There is no letter G in Arabic. So all those G sounds you learned in Egyptian Arabic are spelt with a J. For example Gamal (meaning Camel) is spelt "Jamal" with a J, and pronounced "Jamal" outside Egypt. In English we obviously borrowed the Egyptian pronounciation.
Unfortunately the J only looks like a J when it is at the end of a word, or when the previous letter can’t link to it. Because when it is in the middle of a word, the bottom is chopped off. The dot is still there below the letter though. So with the bottom chopped off, it looks like this:
ﺠ
Much harder to recognise as a J. At the start of a word, it doesn’t have that bit in the bottom right connecting it to the previous word, so it looks like this:
ﺟ
Now it looks a bit like a squashed J, with a dot under it. Although to me J looks more like a wave breaking when it is not at the end of a word.
So here is the word "Jamal" (Which Egyptians pronounce Gamal) meaning Camel:
جمل
And the very similar word "Jamyl" (Gamyl) meaning beautiful:
جميل
If you remove the dot from the J it stops being a J, and starts being a very breathy H. With no dot it is the H described as breathing on your glasses. It is the H in MaHmoud. In English it is often written as a capital H. It is different from the ordinary English h and different from the KH sound from European languages. Here are four H’s in a row:
ﺣﺤﺢ ﺡ
What is this word?
حج