Ain

Ain (French pronunciation: ​[ɛ̃]; Arpitan: En) is a department named after the Ain River on the eastern edge of France. Being part of the region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and bordered by the rivers Saône and Rhône, the department of Ain enjoys a privileged geographic situation. It has an excellent transport network (TGV, highways) and benefits from the proximity to the international airports of Lyon and Geneva.

Ain is composed of four geographically different areas (Bresse, Dombes, Bugey and Pays de Gex) which – each with its own characteristics – contribute to the diversity and the dynamic economic development of the department. In the Bresse agriculture and agro-industry are dominated by the cultivation of cereals, cattle breeding, milk and cheese production as well as poultry farming. In the Dombes, pisciculture assumes greater importance as does wine making in the Bugey. The high diversification of the department's industry is accompanied by a strong presence of the plastics sector in and around Oyonnax (so-called "Plastics Valley").

Ayin

Ayin or Ayn is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʿAyin , Hebrew ʿAyin ע, Aramaic ʿĒ , Syriac ʿĒ ܥ, and Arabic ʿAyn ع (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). ﻉ comes twenty‐first in the New Persian alphabet and eighteenth in Arabic hijaʾi order.

The ʿayin glyph in these various languages represents, or has represented, a voiced pharyngeal fricative (/ʕ/), or a similarly articulated consonant, which has no equivalent or approximate substitute in the sound‐system of English. There are many possible transliterations.

Origins

The letter name is derived from Proto-Semitic *ʿayn- "eye", and the Phoenician letter had an eye-shape, ultimately derived from the ı͗r hieroglyph

To this day, ʿayin in Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic, and Maltese means "eye" and "spring" (ʿayno in Neo-Aramaic).

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Ο, Latin O, and Cyrillic О, all representing vowels.

The sound represented by ayin is common to much of the Afrasiatic language family, such as the Egyptian, Cushitic, and Semitic languages. Some scholars believe that the sound in Proto-Indo-European transcribed h₃ was similar, though this is debatable. (See Laryngeal theory.)

Ain (spring)

An ain is a spring in North Africa, which reaches the surface as a result of an artesian basin and is of particular importance in arid regions. It can produce a flow of water directly or result in evaporitic saline crusts. Known examples are found in the oases of the Tunisian region of Bled el Djerid and in the entire area around the depressions of Chott el Djerid and Chott el Gharsa. Here, there are water-bearing strata, usually of sand or sandstone, that act as aquifers in their function.