a velar nasal (). Remnants can be found in the Yiddish pronunciations of some words such as /ˈjaŋkəv/ and /ˈmansə/ from Hebrew (yaʿăqōḇ, "Jacob") and (maʿăse, "story"), but in other cases, the nasal has disappeared and been replaced by /j/, such as /ˈmajsə/ and /ˈmajrəv/ from Hebrew and (maʿărāḇ, "west"). In Israeli Hebrew (except for Mizrahi pronunciations), it represents a glottal stop in certain cases but is usually silent (it behaves the same as aleph). However, changes in adjoining vowels often testify to the former presence of a pharyngeal or epiglottal articulation. Additionally, it may be used as a shibboleth to identify the ethnolinguistic background of a Hebrew-speaker, as most Israeli Arab non-Jews and some of Israel's Mizrahi Jews (mainly Yemenite Jews) use the more traditional pronunciation, while other Hebrew-speakers pronounce it similar to Aleph. Ayin is also one of the three letters that can take a furtive patach (). In Hebrew loanwords in Greek and Latin, ʿayin is sometimes reflected as /g/, since the biblical phonemes (or "ʿ") and (represented by "g") were both represented in Hebrew writing by the letter ʿayin (see Ġain). Gomorrah is from the original (modern ʿAmora) and Gaza from the original (ʿaza) (cf. Arabic غزة Ġazzah, IPA: [ˈɣazza].) In Yiddish, the ʿayin is used to write the vowel e when it is not part of the diphthong ey. Significance In gematria, ʿayin represents the number 70. ʿayin is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns (called tagin) when written in a sefer Torah. Arabic ʿayn The Arabic letter (called ) is the eighteenth letter of the alphabet. It is written in one of several ways depending on its position in the word: Pronunciation Arabic ʿayn is one of the most common letters in Arabic. Depending on the region, it ranges from a pharyngeal to an epiglottal . It is voiced, its voiceless counterpart being . Due to its position as the innermost letter to emerge from the throat, al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi, who wrote the first Arabic dictionary, actually started writing with as the first letter instead of the eighteenth; he viewed its origins deep down in the throat as a sign that it was the first sound, the essential sound, the voice and a representation of the self. In the Persian language and other languages using the Persian alphabet, it is pronounced as (glottal stop), and rarely as in some