RESH

'Reish' is the twentieth letter of many Semitic alphabets, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually or but also or in Hebrew.
In most Semitic alphabets, the letter resh (and its equivalents) is 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 a dot: resh has a dot above the letter, and the otherwise identical dalet has a dot below the letter. In the Arabic alphabet, has a longer tail than . In the Aramaic and Hebrew square alphabet, resh is a rounded single stroke while dalet is a right-angle of two strokes. The similarity led to the variant spellings of the name ''Nebuchadnezzar'' and ''Nebuchadrezzar''.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Rho (Ρ), Etruscan ''r'' , Latin R, and Cyrillic Р.

Contents

Origins of Resh

Arabic rāʼ

Resh in Hebrew

As an abbreviation

Spelling out

Origins of Resh

Resh is usually assumed to have come from a pictogram of a head (in modern Hebrew ''rosh''; in Arabic, ''ra's''). The word's East Semitic cognate, ''riš'', was one possible phonetic reading of the Sumerian cuneiform sign for "head" (SAG ) in Akkadian.

Arabic rāʼ

The letter is named ''rāʼ'', and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

Resh in Hebrew

In Hebrew, Resh represents a rhotic consonant that has different realizations for different dialects:

★ In modern Hebrew, a voiced uvular fricative ().

★ In Ashkenazi pronunciations, either an alveolar approximant (as in English) or sometimes a uvular trill .

★ In Mizrahi pronunciaitons, either an alveolar trill , or flap .
Resh, along with Ayin, Aleph, He, and Heth, cannot receive a dagesh.
Resh in gematria represents the number 200.

As an 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 to indicate that they were a Rabbi or to indicate the other use of Rav, as a generic term for a teacher or a personal spiritual guide.

Spelling out

Resh is used in an Israeli phrase; after a child will say something false, one might say "B'Shin Qoph, Resh" (With Shin, Qoph, Resh). These letters spell Sheqer, which is the Hebrew word for a lie. It would be akin to an English speaker saying "That's an L-I-E."