Aramaic Letters: Ey

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The next letter of the Aramaic Alphabet is called Ey, pronounced a little bit like English word eye but with more of an e at the start, rather than a. It corresponds to the Hebrew letter Ayin in the Hebrew Alphabet. It carries the same guttural sound, but the name of the letter in Aramaic is slightly different than Hebrew. The letters in the Aramaic Alphabet are almost identical to those in Hebrew, but have slightly different names and sometimes slightly different sounds.

  Aramaic audio: Listen to the sound of Ey.

Here is what the Aramaic letter Ey looks like:

Here is how to write Ey:



 
Like Alap and Chet, Ey is a special letter called a guttural. Its sound is often described as a vocal glottal stop, meaning that it is produced by making a sound similar to the letter a or e but far back in the throat, and closing the throat during the sound, slightly choking it. This sound does not exist in English.

The sound of Ey is still present in Arabic, a language closely related to Aramaic. (Arabic, in fact, has two Ey sounds.) Like the guttural Chet, Ey is often not articulated correctly by Aramaic speakers today, because Aramaic speakers have been influenced by many other languages where gutturals do not exist. Yemenite Jews, however, still articulate Ey properly.

Like Alap, Ey often carries a vowel with it. Those unable to articulate Ey correctly often treat it as though it were Alap.
 
When learning Aramaic, you should at least try to pronounce letters like Chet and Ey correctly. Failing to do so will make it much harder to spell Aramaic words, because you will not be able to use the correct sound of the word to guide you.

Ey has the Gematria (numerical value) of 70.

Practise writing Ey in the grid lines below:










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