Gha

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The letter Ƣ (minuscule: ƣ) was used in the Latin orthographies of various, mostly Turkic languages, such as Azeri or the Jaꞑalif orthography for Tatar.[1] It was also included in the pinyin-based alphabets for Kazakh and Uyghur and in the 1928 Soviet Kurdish Latin alphabet.[2] It usually represents a voiced velar fricative [ɣ] but is sometimes used for a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]. All orthographies that used the letter were phased out, and it is not supported in all Latin fonts. It can still be seen in pre-1983 books published in the People’s Republic of China.[citation needed]

Letters Q and q of Sütterlin script

Historically, it is derived from a handwritten form of the small Latin letter q around 1900. The majuscule is then based on the minuscule. Its use for [ɣ] stems from the linguistic tradition of representing such sounds (and similar ones) by q in Turkic languages and in transcriptions of Arabic or Persian (compare kaf and qaf).[3]

In alphabetical order, it comes between G and H.

Modern replacements

Unicode

Script error: No such module "labelled list hatnote". In Unicode, the majuscule Ƣ is encoded in the Latin Extended-B block at U+01A2 and the minuscule ƣ is encoded at U+01A3.[4] The assigned names, "Page Template:Smallcaps/styles.css has no content.LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OI" and "Page Template:Smallcaps/styles.css has no content.LATIN SMALL LETTER OI" respectively, are acknowledged by the Unicode Consortium to be mistakes, as gha is unrelated to the letters O and I.[5] The Unicode Consortium therefore has provided the character name aliases "Page Template:Smallcaps/styles.css has no content.LATIN CAPITAL LETTER GHA" and "Page Template:Smallcaps/styles.css has no content.LATIN SMALL LETTER GHA".[4]

Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow features an episode purporting to be the story of a Soviet officer, Tchitcherine, dispatched to Kirghizstan to serve on a committee tasked with devising an alphabet for the Kyrgyz language. Tchitcherine's particular contribution is the invention of the letter Ƣ, which is thus perhaps the only obsolete letter of a Central Asian language that may be familiar to the non-specialist, English-reading public through a widely circulated novel.

References

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  1. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Some examples of LATIN LETTER OI (gha) (U+01A2, U+01A3) in Tatar and Uighur printing, with remarks on the recommended glyphs" (PDF).
  2. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Культура и письменность Востока [Eastern Culture and Literature] (in русский). Vol. 2. 1928.
  3. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Unicode mailing list".
  4. ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Unicode chart" (PDF).
  5. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Unicode Technical Note #27: Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names".

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