Gimel is the third (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order) letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician gīml 𐤂, Hebrew gīmel ג‎, Aramaic gāmal 𐡂, Syriac gāmal ܓ Arabic jīm ج‎. Ancient North Arabian 𐪔‎, South Arabian 𐩴, and Ge'ez ገ.

Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all derived alphabets, except Arabic, is a voiced velar plosive [ɡ]; in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents either a /d͡ʒ/ or /ʒ/ for most Arabic speakers except in Northern Egypt, the southern parts of Yemen and some parts of Oman where it is pronounced as the voiced velar plosive [ɡ].

In its Proto-Canaanite form, the letter may have been named after a weapon that was either a staff sling or a throwing stick (spear thrower), ultimately deriving from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on the hieroglyph below:

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek gamma (Γ), the Latin C, G, Ɣ and Ȝ, and the Cyrillic Г, Ґ, and Ғ.

The Arabic letter ج is named جيم jīm [d͡ʒiːm, ʒiːm, ɡiːm, ɟiːm]. It has four forms, and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

The similarity to ḥāʼ ح  is likely a function of the original Syriac forms converging to a single symbol, requiring that one of them be distinguished as a dot; a similar process occurred to zāy and rāʾ.

In all varieties of Arabic, cognate words will have consistent differences in pronunciation of the letter. The standard pronunciation taught outside the Arabic speaking world is an affricate [d͡ʒ], which was the agreed-upon pronunciation by the end of the nineteenth century to recite the Qur'an, this sound also corresponds to ġ /d͡ʒ/ in Maltese as in ġar "neighbor" and Arabic جار jār "neighbor" both pronounced [d͡ʒaːr]. It is pronounced as a fricative [ʒ] in most of Northern Africa and the Levant, and [ɡ] is the prestigious and most common pronunciation in Egypt, which is also found in Southern Arabian Peninsula. Differences in pronunciation occur because readers of Modern Standard Arabic pronounce words following their native dialects.

Egyptians always use the letter to represent [ɡ] as well as in names and loanwords, such as جولف "golf". However, ⟨ج⟩ may be used in Egypt to transcribe /ʒ~d͡ʒ/ (normally pronounced [ʒ]) or if there is a need to distinguish them completely, then ⟨چ⟩ is used to represent /ʒ/, which is also a proposal for Mehri and Soqotri languages.