Hebrew spelling: The Hebrew version according to the reconstruction shown above is descended from Proto-Semitic *, a
phoneme thought to correspond to a
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative , similar to Welsh
Ll in "
Llandudno" (). See also
Hebrew phonology,
Śawt.
Sin and Shin dot The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a
sibilant , like English
sour, and a , like English
shoe. Prior to the advent and ascendancy of
Tiberian orthography, the two were distinguished by a superscript
samekh, i.e. vs. , which later developed into the dot. The two are distinguished by a dot above the left-hand side of the letter for and above the right-hand side for . In the biblical name
Issachar () only, the second sin/shin letter is always written without any dot, even in fully vocalized texts. This is because the second sin/shin is always silent.
Unicode encoding Significance In
gematria, Shin represents the number 300. The breakdown of its namesake, Shin[300] - Yodh[10] - Nunh[50] gives the
geometrical meaningful number
360, which can be interpreted as encompassing the fullness of the degrees of
circles. Shin as a
prefix commonly used in late-Biblical and Modern Hebrew language carries similar meaning as specificity faring
relative pronouns in English: "that (..)", "which (..)" and "who (..)". When used this way, it is pronounced as 'sheh-' (IPA /ʃɛ-/. In colloquial Hebrew,
Kaph and Shin together are a contraction of , ''ka'asher (''as, when). Shin is also one of the seven letters which receive “crowns” (called
tagin) in a
Sefer Torah. (See
Gimmel,
Ayin,
Teth,
Nun,
Zayin, and
Tzadi). According to
Judges 12:6, the tribe of
Ephraim could not differentiate between Shin and
Samekh; when the
Gileadites were at war with the
Ephraimites, they would ask suspected Ephraimites to say the word
shibboleth; an Ephraimite would say
sibboleth and thus be exposed. This episode is the origin of the English term
shibboleth.
In Judaism Shin also stands for the word
Shaddai, a Name of God. A
kohen forms the letter Shin with each of his hands as he recites the
Priestly Blessing. In the mid-1960s, actor
Leonard Nimoy used a single-handed version of this gesture to create the
Vulcan hand salute for his character,
Mr. Spock, on
Star Trek. The letter Shin is often written on the case of a
mezuzah, a scroll of parchment containing select Biblical texts. Sometimes the whole word
Shaddai will be written. The Shema Yisrael prayer also commands the Israelites to write God's commandments on their hearts (Deut. 6:6); the shape of the letter Shin mimics the structure of the human
heart: the lower, larger left
ventricle (which supplies the full body) and the smaller right ventricle (which supplies the lungs) are positioned like the lines of the letter Shin. A religious significance has been applied to the fact that there are three valleys that comprise the city of Jerusalem's geography: the Valley of Ben Hinnom, Tyropoeon Valley, and
Kidron Valley, and that these valleys converge to also form the shape of the letter shin, and that the
Temple in Jerusalem is located where the dagesh (horizontal line) is. This is seen as a fulfillment of passages such as that instructs Jews to celebrate the Pasach at "the place the LORD will choose as a dwelling for his Name" (NIV). In the
Sefer Yetzirah the letter Shin is King over Fire, Formed Heaven in the Universe, Hot in the Year, and the Head in the Soul. The 13th-century Kabbalistic text
Sefer HaTemunah, holds that a single letter of unknown pronunciation, held by some to be the four-pronged shin on one side of the
teffilin box, is missing from the current alphabet. The world's flaws, the book teaches, are related to the absence of this letter, the eventual revelation of which will repair the universe.
In Cyrillic letter "
sha" is sometimes said to derive from the Hebrew letter
shin, emphasizing the letters’ similarity. The corresponding letter for the sound in Cyrillic is nearly identical in shape to the Hebrew
shin. Given that the
Cyrillic script includes borrowed letters from a variety of different alphabets such as
Greek and
Latin, it is often suggested that the letter
sha is directly borrowed from the Hebrew letter
shin (other hypothesized sources include
Coptic and
Samaritan).
Hebrew terms containing Shin Shin Bet is a commonly used acronym for the Israeli
Department of Internal General Security. Despite referring to a former name of the department, it remains the term usually used in English. In Modern Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic, the security service is known as the
Shabak. A
Shin-Shin clash is
Israeli military parlance for a battle between two tank divisions (from ). ''Sh'at haShin'' ('Shin hour') is the last possible moment for any action, usually in a military context. Corresponds to the English expression ''''. ==Syriac shin==