Ain ࡘ

Ain is the last sign in the Mandaic range of the modern character standard, and it is a borrowing from the Arabic letter of that name, taken in for the sounds of Arabic words. It joins only to the right.

It is not part of the inherited Semitic sequence and it is not one of the traditional twenty-four. The alphabet's own sixteenth letter, in, is the inherited descendant of Aramaic ayin, and the two should not be confused; the atlas records a relation between them marking them as distinct for exactly that reason.

The standard records ain at the end of the Mandaic range, after the two ligature letters, which is where a late addition naturally falls in a list arranged by the alphabet's own order.

Its presence records what centuries of contact did to a small liturgical language surrounded by Arabic. Mandaic answered most such pressure by marking its inherited letters rather than adding new ones, so a borrowed letter is the exception, and it is worth noticing which sound was worth the exception: the Arabic voiced pharyngeal, in a language whose own pharyngeals had weakened away.

Because ain joins only to the right, the letter after it begins a fresh connected group, which it shares with the two ligature signs that precede it in the range. All three of the signs following the inherited twenty-two behave the same way on the page, so the additions to the Mandaic alphabet are visible in how a line breaks as well as in where they fall in a list.

Mandaic has spent its documented history as the language of a small community inside larger ones, and Arabic has been the largest of them for well over a thousand years. The marks on the inherited letters record that pressure: f, the velar and dental fricatives, the affricates, all supplied for words the language took in. Ain records it differently, by bringing over a letter whole.

The point is easily overstated in either direction. A borrowed letter at the end of a range is not evidence that a script was overwhelmed, and the inherited twenty-two are untouched and still in order. It is evidence of ordinary contact, of the sort every minority language has with its neighbours.

What is not ordinary is the position of the community itself. Mandaeans are a small and endangered religious minority, and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been hard on them: displacement, violence and the emigration of much of the Iraqi community since the early years of this century have left a diaspora spread across several continents and a spoken language with very few remaining speakers.

The script is in current liturgical use in that diaspora. An entry describing its last encoded sign should say so, because the alternative is to write about a living tradition in the past tense, which is a mistake this atlas is built to avoid.