G

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G (minuscule: g) is the seventh letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other Western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is gee (pronounced /ˈdʒiː/ <phonos file="LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-G.wav"></phonos>), plural gees.[1]

The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the single-storey (sometimes "opentail") Template:Char and the double-storey (sometimes "looptail") Template:Char. The former is commonly used in handwriting and typefaces based on it, especially in texts intended to be read by children; it is the style used by most sans-serif typefaces, such as Helvetica. The latter form is used by most serif typefaces, such as Times.

History

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Egyptian Phoenician
gaml 		Western Greek
Gamma 		Etruscan
C 		Old Latin
C 		Latin
G
<hiero>T14</hiero>
 Phoenician gimel Greek Gamma Etruscan C Old Latin Latin G

The evolution of the Latin alphabet's G can be traced back to the Latin alphabet's predecessor, the Greek alphabet. The voiced velar stop was represented by the third letter of the Greek alphabet, gamma (Γ), which was later adopted by the Etruscan language. Latin then borrowed this "rounded form" of gamma, C, to represent the same sound in words such as recei, which was likely an early dative form of rex, meaning "king", as found in an "early Latin inscription."[2] Over time, however, the letter C shifted to represent the voiceless velar stop, leading to the displacement of the letter K. Scholars believe that this change can be attributed to the influence of the Etruscan language on Latin.[2]

Afterwards, the letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of 'C' to distinguish voiced Script error: No such module "IPA". from voiceless Script error: No such module "IPA"., and G was used to represent a voiced velar stop from this point on and C "stood for the unvoiced velar only".[2]

The recorded originator of 'G' is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, who added letter G to the teaching of the Roman alphabet during the 3rd century BCE:[3] he was the first Roman to open a fee-paying school, around 230 BCE. At this time, 'K' had fallen out of favor, and 'C', which had formerly represented both Script error: No such module "IPA". and Script error: No such module "IPA". before open vowels, had come to express Script error: No such module "IPA". in all environments.

Ruga's positioning of 'G' shows that alphabetic order related to the letters' values as Greek numerals was a concern even in the 3rd century BCE. According to some records, the original seventh letter, 'Z', had been purged from the Latin alphabet somewhat earlier in the 3rd century BCE by the Roman censor Appius Claudius, who found it distasteful and foreign.[4] Sampson (1985) suggests that: "Evidently the order of the alphabet was felt to be such a concrete thing that a new letter could be added in the middle only if a 'space' was created by the dropping of an old letter."[5]

George Hempl proposed in 1899 that there never was such a "space" in the alphabet and that in fact 'G' was a direct descendant of zeta. Zeta took shapes like ⊏ in some of the Old Italic scripts; the development of the monumental form 'G' from this shape would be exactly parallel to the development of 'C' from gamma. He suggests that the pronunciation Script error: No such module "IPA". > Script error: No such module "IPA". was due to contamination from the also similar-looking 'K'.[6]

Eventually, both velar consonants Script error: No such module "IPA". and Script error: No such module "IPA". developed palatalized allophones before front vowels; consequently in today's Romance languages, ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ have different sound values depending on context (known as hard and soft C and hard and soft G). Because of French influence, English language orthography shares this feature.

Typographic variants

Image shows the two forms of the letter g
Typographic variants include a double-storey and a single-storey g.

The modern lowercase Template:Char has two typographic variants: the single-storey (sometimes "opentail") g, and the double-storey (sometimes "looptail") g. The single-storey form derives from the majuscule (uppercase) form by raising the serif that distinguishes it from 'c' to the top of the loop (thus closing the loop), and extending the vertical stroke downward and to the left. The double-storey form (g) had developed similarly, except that some ornate forms then extended the tail back to the right, and to the left again, forming a closed bowl or loop. In the double-storey version, a small top stroke in the upper-right, often terminating in an orb shape, is called an "ear". The loop-tail form is the original one, as seen in 9th century Carolingian script; evolving over centuries of monastic copying, the open-tail variant came to predominate and it was this that Gutenberg adopted when creating the first Blackletter typefaces – until that in turn was replaced by Humanist minuscule, which reasserted the closed-tail form.[7]

Generally, the two forms are complementary and interchangeable; the form displayed is a typeface selection choice. In Unicode, the two appearances are generally treated as glyph variants with no semantic difference. Most serif typefaces use the looptail form (for example, Template:Char) and most sans-serif typefaces use the opentail form (for example, Template:Char) but the code point in both cases is U+0067. For applications where the single-storey variant must be distinguished (such as strict IPA in a typeface where the usual g character is double-storey), the character Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.U+0261 ɡ Script error: No such module "Unicode data". is available, as well as an upper case version, Page Template:Mono/styles.css has no content.U+A7AC Ɡ Script error: No such module "Unicode data"..

Occasionally the difference has been exploited to provide contrast. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, opentail ⟨⟩ has always represented a voiced velar plosive, while looptail ⟨⟩ represented a voiced velar fricative from 1895 to 1900.[8][9] In 1948, the Council of the International Phonetic Association recognized Template:Angbr IPA and ⟨⟩ as typographic equivalents,[10] and this decision was reaffirmed in 1993.[11] While the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association recommended the use of ⟨⟩ for a velar plosive and Template:Angbr IPA for an advanced one for languages where it is preferable to distinguish the two, such as Russian,[12] this practice never caught on.[13] The 1999 Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, the successor to the Principles, abandoned the recommendation and acknowledged both shapes as acceptable variants.[14]

In 2018, a study found that native English speakers have little conscious awareness of the looptail form (g).The authors write: "Despite being questioned repeatedly, and despite being informed directly that G has two lowercase print forms, nearly half of the participants failed to reveal any knowledge of the looptail 'g', and only 1 of the 38 participants was able to write looptail 'g' correctly".[15][16]

Use in writing systems

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Pronunciation of ⟨g⟩ by language
Orthography Phonemes Environment
Afrikaans /χ/
Arabic romanization /ɡ/ A dialectal sound not found in Standard Arabic. However, the digraph gh is used to romanize the Standard Arabic sound /ɣ/.
Azeri /ɟ/
Catalan Script error: No such module "IPA". Except before e, i
/(d)ʒ/ Before e, i
Template:Nwr (Pinyin) /k/
Danish Script error: No such module "IPA". Except word-initially
Script error: No such module "IPA". Word-initially
Dutch /ɣ/ or /χ/
English /ɡ/ Any
/dʒ/ Before e, i, y
/ʒ/ Before e, i in more recent loanwords from French
silent Some words, initial <gn>, and word-finally before a consonant
Esperanto /ɡ/
Faroese /j/ soft, lenited; see Faroese phonology
/k/ hard
/tʃ/ soft
/v/ after a, æ, á, e, o, ø and before u
/w/ after ó, u, ú and before a, i, or u
silent after a, æ, á, e, o, ø and before a
Fijian /ŋ/
French /ɡ/ Except before e, i, y
/ʒ/ Before e, i, y
Galician Script error: No such module "IPA". ~ Script error: No such module "IPA". Except before e, i, see Gheada for consonant variation
/ʃ/ Before e, i, obsolete, replaced by ⟨x⟩
Greek romanization /ɡ/ Ancient Greek
/ɣ/ Modern Greek except before ai, e, i, oi, y
/ʝ/ Modern Greek before ai, e, i, oi, y
Icelandic /c/ soft
/k/ hard
/ɣ/ hard, lenited; see Icelandic phonology
/j/ soft, lenited
Irish /ɡ/ Except after i or before e, i
/ɟ/ After i or before e, i
Italian /ɡ/ Except before e, i
/dʒ/ Before e, i
Malay /g/
Norman /ɡ/ Except before e, i
/dʒ/ Before e, i
Norwegian /ɡ/ Except before ei, i, j, øy, y
/j/ Before ei, i, j, øy, y
Portuguese Script error: No such module "IPA". Except before e, i, y
/ʒ/ Before e, i, y
Romanian /ɡ/ Except before e, i
/dʒ/ Before e, i
Romansh /ɡ/ Except before e, i
/dʑ/ Before e, i
Samoan /ŋ/
Scottish Gaelic /k/ Except after i or before e, i
/kʲ/ After i or before e, i
Spanish Script error: No such module "IPA". Except before e, i, y
Script error: No such module "IPA". Before e, i, y
Swedish /ɡ/ Except before ä, e, i, ö, y
/j/ Before ä, e, i, ö, y
Turkish /ɡ/ Except before e, i, ö, ü
/ɟ/ Before e, i, ö, ü
Vietnamese /ɣ/
/z/ ~ /j/ Before i

English

In English, the letter appears either alone or in some digraphs. Alone, it represents

  • a voiced velar plosive (Script error: No such module "IPA". or "hard" ⟨g⟩), as in goose, gargoyle, and game;
  • a voiced palato-alveolar affricate (Script error: No such module "IPA". or "soft" ⟨g⟩), predominates before ⟨i⟩, ⟨e⟩ or ⟨y⟩, as in giant, ginger, and geology; or
  • a voiced palato-alveolar sibilant (Script error: No such module "IPA".) in post-medieval loanwords from French, such as rouge, beige, genre (often), and margarine (rarely)

⟨g⟩ is predominantly soft before ⟨e⟩ (including the digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩), ⟨i⟩, or ⟨y⟩, and hard otherwise. It is hard in those derivations from γυνή (gynḗ) meaning woman where initial-worded as such. Soft ⟨g⟩ is also used in many words that came into English from medieval church/academic use, French, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese – these tend to, in other ways in English, closely align to their Ancient Latin and Greek roots (such as fragile, logic or magic). There remain widely used a few English words of non-Romance origin where ⟨g⟩ is hard followed by ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ (get, give, gift, gig, girl, giggle), and very few in which ⟨g⟩ is soft though followed by ⟨a⟩ such as gaol, which since the 20th century is almost always written as "jail". The word fungi, although from Romance origin, is pronounced with a hard ⟨g⟩.

The double consonant ⟨gg⟩ has the value Script error: No such module "IPA". (hard ⟨g⟩) as in nugget, with very few exceptions: Script error: No such module "IPA". in exaggerate and veggies and dialectally Script error: No such module "IPA". in suggest.

The digraph ⟨dg⟩ has the value Script error: No such module "IPA". (soft ⟨g⟩), as in badger. Non-digraph ⟨dg⟩ can also occur, in compounds like floodgate and headgear.

The digraph ⟨ng⟩ may represent:

  • a velar nasal (/ŋ/) as in length, singer
  • the latter followed by hard ⟨g⟩ (Script error: No such module "IPA".) as in jungle, finger, longest

Non-digraph ⟨ng⟩ also occurs, with possible values

  • Script error: No such module "IPA". as in engulf, ungainly
  • Script error: No such module "IPA". as in sponge, angel
  • Script error: No such module "IPA". as in melange

The digraph ⟨gh⟩ (in many cases a replacement for the obsolete letter yogh, which took various values including Script error: No such module "IPA"., Script error: No such module "IPA"., Script error: No such module "IPA". and Script error: No such module "IPA".) may represent:

  • Script error: No such module "IPA". as in ghost, aghast, burgher, spaghetti
  • Script error: No such module "IPA". as in cough, laugh, roughage
  • ∅ (no sound) as in through, neighbor, night
  • Script error: No such module "IPA". in ugh
  • (rarely) Script error: No such module "IPA". in hiccough
  • (rarely) Script error: No such module "IPA". in s'ghetti

Non-digraph ⟨gh⟩ also occurs, in compounds like foghorn, pigheaded.

The digraph ⟨gn⟩ may represent:

  • Script error: No such module "IPA". as in gnostic, deign, foreigner, signage
  • Script error: No such module "IPA". in loanwords like champignon, lasagna

Non-digraph ⟨gn⟩ also occurs, as in signature, agnostic.

The trigraph ⟨ngh⟩ has the value Script error: No such module "IPA". as in gingham or dinghy. Non-trigraph ⟨ngh⟩ also occurs, in compounds like stronghold and dunghill.

G is the tenth least frequently used letter in the English language (after Y, P, B, V, K, J, X, Q, and Z), with a frequency of about 2.02% in words.

Other languages

Most Romance languages and some Scandinavian languages also have two main pronunciations for ⟨g⟩, hard and soft. While the soft value of ⟨g⟩ varies in different Romance languages (Script error: No such module "IPA". in French and Portuguese, Script error: No such module "IPA". in Catalan, Script error: No such module "IPA". in Italian and Romanian, and Script error: No such module "IPA". in most dialects of Spanish), in all except Romanian and Italian, soft ⟨g⟩ has the same pronunciation as the ⟨j⟩.

In Italian and Romanian, ⟨gh⟩ is used to represent Script error: No such module "IPA". before front vowels where ⟨g⟩ would otherwise represent a soft value. In Italian and French, ⟨gn⟩ is used to represent the palatal nasal Script error: No such module "IPA"., a sound somewhat similar to the ⟨ny⟩ in English canyon. In Italian, the trigraph ⟨gli⟩, when appearing before a vowel or as the article and pronoun gli, represents the palatal lateral approximant Script error: No such module "IPA".. Other languages typically use ⟨g⟩ to represent Script error: No such module "IPA"., regardless of position.

Amongst European languages, Czech, Dutch, Estonian and Finnish are exceptions, as they do not have Script error: No such module "IPA". in their native words. In Dutch, ⟨g⟩ represents a voiced velar fricative Script error: No such module "IPA". instead, a sound that does not occur in modern English, but there is a dialectal variation: many Netherlandic dialects use a voiceless fricative (Script error: No such module "IPA". or Script error: No such module "IPA".) instead, and in southern dialects it may be palatal Script error: No such module "IPA".. Nevertheless, word-finally, it is always voiceless in all dialects, including the standard Dutch of Belgium and the Netherlands. On the other hand, some dialects (like Amelands) may have a phonemic Script error: No such module "IPA"..

Faroese uses ⟨g⟩ to represent Script error: No such module "IPA"., in addition to Script error: No such module "IPA"., and also uses it to indicate a glide.

In Māori, ⟨g⟩ is used in the digraph ⟨ng⟩ which represents the velar nasal Script error: No such module "IPA". and is pronounced like the ⟨ng⟩ in singer.

The Samoan and Fijian languages use the letter ⟨g⟩ by itself for Script error: No such module "IPA"..

In older Czech and Slovak orthographies, ⟨g⟩ was used to represent Script error: No such module "IPA"., while Script error: No such module "IPA". was written as ⟨ǧ⟩ (⟨g⟩ with caron).

The Azerbaijani Latin alphabet uses ⟨g⟩ exclusively for the "soft" sound, namely Script error: No such module "IPA".. The sound Script error: No such module "IPA". is written as ⟨q⟩. This leads to unusual spellings of loanwords: qram 'gram', qrup 'group', qaraj 'garage', qallium 'gallium'.

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨ɡ⟩ represents the voiced velar plosive. The small caps ⟨ɢ⟩ represents the voiced uvular plosive.

Other uses

Template:Main article

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

Ligatures and abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

The principal forms of the letter have codepoints in Unicode as listed below. The ASCII codes for G and g are the same as the Unicode codepoints:

In addition, there are many forms of 'G with a diacritic', encoded either as a precomposed character or using a combining diacritic.

Other

Template:Letter reps

See also

Notes

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References

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  1. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 1976.
  2. ^ a b c Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Ray, Michael; Gaur, Aakanksha (2022-04-27). "G". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2023-05-08.
  3. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Gnanadesikan, Amalia E. (2011-09-13). The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781444359855.
  4. ^ Encyclopaedia Romana
  5. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Everson, Michael; Sigurðsson, Baldur; Málstöð, Íslensk. "Sorting the letter ÞORN". Evertype. ISO CEN/TC304. Archived from the original on 2018-09-24. Retrieved 2018-11-01.
  6. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Hempl, George (1899). "The Origin of the Latin Letters G and Z". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 30. The Johns Hopkins University Press: 24–41. doi:10.2307/282560. JSTOR 282560.
  7. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Zhang, Sarah (April 9, 2018). "The 'g' in Google's Old Logo Is Really Weird: a tale of two "g"s". The Atlantic.
  8. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Association phonétique internationale (January 1895). "vɔt syr l alfabɛ" [Votes sur l'alphabet]. Le Maître Phonétique. 10 (1): 16–17. JSTOR 44707535.
  9. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Association phonétique internationale (February–March 1900). "akt ɔfisjɛl" [Acte officiel]. Le Maître Phonétique. 15 (2/3): 20. JSTOR 44701257.
  10. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Jones, Daniel (July–December 1948). "desizjɔ̃ ofisjɛl" [Décisions officielles]. Le Maître Phonétique. 26 (63) (90): 28–30. JSTOR 44705217.
  11. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.International Phonetic Association (1993). "Council actions on revisions of the IPA". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 23 (1): 32–34. doi:10.1017/S002510030000476X. S2CID 249420050.
  12. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.International Phonetic Association (1949). The Principles of the International Phonetic Association. Department of Phonetics, University College, London. Supplement to Le Maître Phonétique 91, January–June 1949. JSTOR i40200179.
    • Reprinted in Journal of the International Phonetic Association 40 (3), December 2010, pp. 299–358, Script error: No such module "CS1 identifiers"..
  13. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Wells, John C. (6 November 2006). "Scenes from IPA history". John Wells's phonetic blog. Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
  14. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.International Phonetic Association (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 19. ISBN 0-521-63751-1.
  15. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Wong, Kimberly; Wadee, Frempongma; Ellenblum, Gali; McCloskey, Michael (2 April 2018). "The Devil's in the g-tails: Deficient letter-shape knowledge and awareness despite massive visual experience". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 44 (9): 1324–1335. doi:10.1037/xhp0000532. PMID 29608074. S2CID 4571477.
  16. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Dean, Signe (4 April 2018). "Most People Don't Know What Lowercase 'G' Looks Like And We're Not Even Kidding". Science Alert. Archived from the original on 8 April 2018. Retrieved 7 April 2018.
  17. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  18. ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Miller, Kirk; Ball, Martin (2020-07-11). "L2/20-116R: Expansion of the extIPA and VoQS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-10-24.
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  20. ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Everson, Michael; West, Andrew (2020-10-05). "L2/20-268: Revised proposal to add ten characters for Middle English to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-10-24.
  21. ^ a b c Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-07-30.
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  23. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.

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