Resh

Resh /rɛʃ/ is the twentieth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician rēš 𐤓, Hebrew rēš ר‎, Aramaic rēš 𐡓, Syriac rēš ܪ, and Arabic rāʾ ر‎. It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪇, South Arabian 𐩧, and Ge'ez ረ. Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually [r] or [ɾ], but also [ʁ] or [ʀ] in Hebrew and some North Mesopotamian Arabic dialects.

In most Semitic alphabets, the letter resh (and its equivalents) is visually quite similar to the letter dalet (and its equivalents). In the Syriac alphabet, the letters became so similar that now they are only distinguished by dots; resh has a dot above it, and the otherwise identical dalet has a dot below. In the Arabic alphabet, rāʼ has a longer tail than dāl. In the Aramaic and Hebrew square alphabet, resh is a rounded single stroke while dalet is two strokes that meet at right angles.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek rho (Ρ/ρ), Etruscan , Latin R, Glagolitic Ⱃ, and Cyrillic Р and Armenian Ռ and Ր.

Origins

Resh is usually assumed to mean "head", as in Proto-Semitic *raʾ(i)š- and descendants, like Biblical Hebrew רֹאשׁ (rosh) 'head'.

Arabic rāʾ

The letter is named rāʾ راء in Arabic. It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

It ranges between an alveolar trill [r], an alveolar flap [ɾ], and a uvular trill [ʀ] (the last of which is only found in a few modern varieties). It is pronounced as a postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠] in the traditional dialect of Fes.

Derived letter in other languages

The Unicode standard for Arabic scripts also lists a variant with a full stroke (Unicode character U+075b: ݛ), suggesting that this form is used in certain Northern and Western African languages and some dialects in Pakistan.

In the Pashto alphabet, a variant of the letter rāʾ uses a ring below for the retroflex consonant [ɭ̆~ɽ] and another uses dots above and below the tail for the voiced fricative [ʐ] or [ʝ]:

Hebrew resh

In Hebrew, Resh (רֵישׁ‎) represents a rhotic consonant that has different realizations for different dialects:[citation needed]

• In Modern Hebrew, the most common pronunciation is the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ].
• Ashkenazi use sometimes a uvular trill [ʀ] or an alveolar trill [r]. Native English-speakers replace it sometimes with an alveolar approximant [ɹ], as in English.
• Sephardic and Mizrahi use an alveolar trill [r], an alveolar flap [ɾ] or uvular trill [ʀ].

As a general rule, Resh, along with Ayin, Aleph, He, and Het, do not receive a dagesh. There are a handful of exceptions to this rule. In the Yemenite tradition, Resh is treated as most other consonants in that it can receive a dagesh hazak under certain circumstances. In the most widely accepted version of the Hebrew Bible, there are 17 instances of Resh being marked with a dagesh. The list is: 1 Samuel 1:6, 1 Samuel 10:24, 1 Samuel 17:25, 2 Kings 6:32, Jeremiah 39:12, Ezekiel 16:4 [×2], Habakkuk 3:13, Psalms 52:5, Proverbs 3:8, Proverbs 11:21, Proverbs 14:10, Proverbs 15:1, Job 39:9 (?), Song of Songs 5:2, Ezra 9:6, 2 Chronicles 26:10 (?)

In gematria, Resh represents the number 200.

As abbreviation

Resh as an abbreviation can stand for Rabbi (or Rav, Rebbe, Rabban, Rabbenu, and other similar constructions).

Resh may be found after a person's name on a gravestone, either to indicate that the person was a rabbi or to indicate Rav, a generic term for a teacher or a personal spiritual guide.

Syriac resh

Character encodings

See also

• Rhoticity in English
• English-language vowel changes before historical /r/

External links