Aramaic Letters: Sheen

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The next letter, the second last one in the Aramaic Alphabet, is called Sheen. It is pronounced the way it sounds. It corresponds to the Hebrew letter Shin in the Hebrew Alphabet. The letters in the Aramaic Alphabet are almost identical to those in Hebrew, but have slightly different names and sometimes slightly different sounds.

However, the Hebrew letter Shin comes in two forms, pronounced seen and sheen, respectively. Sin has the dot on the left hand side, and Shin has the dot on the right-hand side. In Hebrew, they are variations of the same letter. In Aramaic, however, only the Shin form exists, with the dot at the right-hand side.

  Aramaic audio: Listen to the sound of Sheen.

Here is what the Aramaic letter Sheen look like: 

 
You might be wondering why Aramaic does not have two forms of this letter, when Hebrew does. The reason is that Aramaic does not need two forms. Any Aramaic words which have the s sound of the Hebrew letter Sin will generally use the letter Semkat instead.

Here is how to write the Aramaic letter Sheen:



Sheen has the Gematria (numerical value) of 300.
 
Sheen is called a sibilant. Sibilants are sounds made with the teeth and lips together, such as s, sh, ts and z. In many languages, especially Semitic languages such as Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic, these sounds become interchanged over time as they are passed between the languages and spoken by many different peoples of different ethnic backgrounds. This is why Aramaic does not need two forms of Sin and Shin, and why it generally uses another letter (Semkat) to make the s sound.

This process is illustrated very clearly by comparing words which have passed from one language to another. In English, for example, we are all familiar with Biblical names starting with s, such as Solomon, Saul, and Samuel. But in Hebrew and Aramaic, these names all start with sh, not s, because the sounds of s and sh are so similar that they have become blurred over the centuries. (These names in Hebrew are Shlomo, Shaul, and Shmuel!)

Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic have many similar examples. For instance, honey in Hebrew is davash () but in Arabic it is debes, where the final s and sh have been interchanged. This example also illustrates that b and v have become interchanged in this particular word, and as you already know from the letter Beet, Beet has two forms (pronounced b or v), depending on whether there is a dot inside the letter.
 
These examples clearly illustrate how the sounds of individual letters become confused when a word gets transferred from one language to another. This is just one small example of how God confused (mixed up) the languages of men at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11!

If we go back to Biblical times, we find something even more interesting - around the time of the Judges of Israel, some groups of people had great difficulty even pronouncing s and sh correctly! It may indicate that the Ephraimites were more used to speaking in Aramaic than Hebrew, since they were coming from a predominantly Aramaic-speaking area! Just as English speakers today often have problems pronouncing some of the Hebrew and Aramaic letters, it seems that people in past centuries also had this problem!

The following verse from the Tanakh illustrates this:

Judges 12:5-6; “...and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.” (KJV)

Here was a simple test - the Ephraimites had to pronounce  (Shibboleth, meaning ears of corn) correctly. In this case, failure led to the death of the unfortunate Ephraimite!

Sheen is one of the four Aramaic letters on the Dreidel, which is a spinning top used for playing games during the festival of Hannukah.

Practise writing Sheen in the grid lines below:










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