View source for G

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{{Two other uses|the letter}}
{{Dablink|For [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Forbidden characters|technical reasons]], G# redirects here. For other uses, see [[G-sharp (disambiguation)]].}}
{{Wiktionary|G|g}}
{{Latin alphabet navbox|ucc=g}}
'''G''' ({{IPAc-en|icon|dʒ|iː}}; [[English_alphabet#Letter_names|named]] ''gee'')<ref>''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language''. 1976.</ref> is the seventh [[Letter (alphabet)|letter]] in the [[basic modern Latin alphabet]].

==History==
The letter G was introduced in the [[History of the Latin alphabet#Old Latin period|Old Latin period]] as a variant of ‹[[c]]› to distinguish voiced {{IPA|/ɡ/}} from voiceless {{IPA|/k/}}. The recorded originator of ‹g› is freedman [[Spurius Carvilius Ruga]], the first Roman to open a fee-paying school, who taught around 230 BC. At this time ‹[[k]]› had fallen out of favor, and ‹c›, which had formerly represented both {{IPA|/ɡ/}} and {{IPA|/k/}} before open vowels, had come to express {{IPA|/k/}} in all environments. It is the seventh letter in the modern alphabet.

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 BC. 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."<ref>[http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/thorn.html Evertype.com]</ref></blockquote> According to some records, the original seventh letter, ‹z›, had been purged from the Latin alphabet somewhat earlier in the 3rd century BC by the [[Roman censor]] [[Appius Claudius Caecus|Appius Claudius]], who found it distasteful and foreign.<ref>[http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/miscellanea/zed.html Encyclopaedia Romana]</ref>

Eventually, both velar consonants {{IPA|/k/}} and {{IPA|/ɡ/}} developed [[palatalization|palatalized]] [[allophone]]s before front vowels; consequently in today's [[Romance languages]], ‹c› and ‹g› have different sound values depending on context.  Because of [[French orthography|French]] influence, [[English orthography]] shares this feature.

== Typographic forms ==
[[File:LowercaseG.svg|right|thumb|200|Typographic variants include a double-story and single-story '''g'''.]]

The modern [[lower case]] ‹g› has two typographic variants: the single-story (sometimes ''opentail'') ‹[[File:Opentail g.svg|10px]]› and the double-story (sometimes ''looptail'') ‹[[File:Looptail g.svg|10px]]›. The single-story version derives from the majuscule (upper-case) 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-story form developed similarly, except that some ornate forms then extended the tail back to the right, and to the left again, forming a closed [[Bowl (typography)|bowl]] or loop. The initial extension to the right was absorbed into the upper closed bowl. The double-story version became popular when printing switched to "[[Roman type]]" because the tail was effectively shorter, making it possible to put more lines on a page. In the double-story version, a small stroke in the upper-right, often terminating in an orb shape, is called an "ear".

Generally, the two are complementary, but occasionally the difference has been exploited to provide contrast. The 1949 ''Principles of the [[International Phonetic Association]]'' recommends using [[File:Opentail g.svg|10px]] for advanced [[voiced velar plosive]]s (denoted by [[ɡ|Latin small letter script G]]) and [[File:Looptail g.svg|10px]] for regular ones where the two are contrasted,{{Citation needed|date=August 2009}} but this suggestion was never accepted by [[phonetics|phoneticians]] in general,{{Citation needed|date=August 2009}} and today ‹[[File:Opentail g.svg|10px]]› is the symbol used in the [[help:IPA|International Phonetic Alphabet]], with ‹[[File:Looptail g.svg|10px]]› acknowledged as an acceptable variant, and is more often used in printed materials.{{Citation needed|date=August 2009}}

==Usage==
In English, the letter represents either a [[voiced postalveolar affricate]] {{IPA|/dʒ/}} ("soft G"), as in ''[[giant (disambiguation)|giant]]'', ''[[ginger]]'', and ''[[geology]]''; or a [[voiced velar plosive]] {{IPA|/ɡ/}} ("hard G"), as in ''goose'', ''gargoyle'', and ''game''. In some words of French origin, the "soft G" is pronounced as a fricative ({{IPA|/ʒ/}}), as in ''rouge'', ''beige'', and ''genre''. Generally, ‹g› is soft before ‹e›, ‹i›, and ‹y› in words of Romance origin, and hard otherwise; there are many English words of non-Romance origin where ‹g› is hard regardless of position (e.g. ''get''), and three (''gaol,'' ''margarine,'' ''algae'') in which it is soft even before an ‹a›. 
 
Non-Romance languages typically use ‹g› to represent {{IPA|/ɡ/}} regardless of position. Amongst European languages [[Dutch language|Dutch]] is an exception as it does not have {{IPA|/ɡ/}} in its native words, and instead ‹g› represents a [[voiced velar fricative]] {{IPA|/ɣ/}}, a sound that does not occur in modern English. [[Faroese language|Faroese]] uses ‹g› to represent {{IPA|/dʒ/}}, in addition to {{IPA|/g/}}, and also uses it to indicate a [[semivowel|glide]]. [[German language|German]], however, is notable for its sparse use of ‹g› to represent a pronunciation (to represent the sounds {{IPA|/ʒ/}}, or {{IPA|/dʒ/}}) regardless of its position within German words.)

While the soft value of ‹g› varies in different Romance languages ({{IPA|/ʒ/}} in French and [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], {{IPA|[(d)ʑ]}} in [[Catalan language|Catalan]], {{IPA|/d͡ʒ/}} in Italian and Romanian, and {{IPA|/x/}} in Castilian Spanish, and {{IPA|/h/}} in other dialects of Spanish), in all except Romanian and Italian, soft ‹g› has the same pronunciation as the ‹j›.
Several [[Digraph (orthography)|digraphs]] are common in English. ‹[[Gh (digraph)|gh]]› which came about when the letter [[yogh]] was removed from the alphabet, and took various values including {{IPA|/ɡ/}}, {{IPA|/ɣ/}}, {{IPA|/x/}}, and {{IPA|/j/}}. It now has a great variety of values, including {{IPA|/f/}} in ''enough'', {{IPA|/ɡ/}} in loan words like ''spaghetti'', and as an indicator of a letter's "long" pronunciation in words like ''eight'' and ''night''. ‹Gn› with value {{IPA|/nj/}} is also common in loanwords, as in ''lasagna'' (though initially, as in ''gnome'', the ‹g› is simply silent). 

In Italian and Romanian, ‹gh› is used to represent {{IPA|/ɡ/}} before front vowels where ‹g› would otherwise represent a soft value. In Italian and French, ‹[[Gn (digraph)|gn]]› is used to represent the [[palatal nasal]] {{IPA|/ɲ/}}, a sound somewhat similar to the ‹ny› in English ''canyon''. In Italian, the [[Digraphs and trigraphs|trigraph]] ‹gli›, when appearing before a vowel, represents the [[palatal lateral approximant]] {{IPA|/ʎ/}}; in the definite article and pronoun ''[[wikt:gli|gli]]'' {{IPA|/ʎi/}}, the digraph ‹gl› represents the same sound.

In Maori ([[Maori Language|Te Reo Māori]]), ‹g› is used in the combination ‹ng› which represents the [[velar nasal]] {{IPA|/ŋ/}} and is pronounced like the ‹ng› in ''singer''.

==Other scripts==
Strictly speaking, of course, the letter ‹g› is not present in other scripts, but the sound it represents is present in many world languages, and is represented by many different [[graphemes]].

The [[Cyrillic alphabet]] analogue is marked as ‹г› (e.g. in [[Russian language|Russian]], [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]], [[Macedonian language|Macedonian]], [[Serbian language|Serbian]], etc.) or ‹ґ› (in [[Ukrainian language|Ukrainian]] as additional letter with a slightly different pronunciation). The [[Hebrew alphabet|Hebrew]] analogue is [[gimel]] ‹ג›.

[[Classical Arabic]] did not have plain {{IPA|/ɡ/}} in its native words (the [[palatalization|palatalized]] form {{IPA|/ɡʲ/}} or {{IPA|/ɟ/}} is believed to have been used), but the sound is standard in [[Modern Standard Arabic]] in [[Egypt]], so as {{IPA|[ɡ]}} is the standard sound in [[Egyptian Arabic]], in which loanwords are normally transcribed with ‹{{lang|ar|ج}}› ([[Gimel#Arabic ǧīm|Gīm]]). However, foreign words containing {{IPA|/ɡ/}} may be transcribed using other letters, such as: {{lang|ar|[[gaf|گ]]}} ([[Gāf]], not part of [[Arabic letters|standard letters]]), {{lang|ar|ق}} ([[qāf]]), {{lang|ar|ك}} ([[kāf]]), {{lang|ar|غ}} ([[Ghain]]) in loanwords or in [[varieties of Arabic]], but not in Egypt, because ‹{{lang|ar|ج}}› is normally pronounced {{IPA|[ɡ]}} in all cases.

==Computing codes==
{{Letter
|NATO=Golf
|Morse=––·
|Character=G7
|Braille=⠛
}}
In [[Unicode]] the [[majuscule|capital]] ‹G› is codepoint U+0047 and the [[Lower case|lowercase]] ‹g› is U+0067.

The [[ASCII]] code for capital ‹G› is 71 and for lowercase ‹g› is 103; or in [[Binary numeral system|binary]] 01000111 and 01100111, respectively.

The [[EBCDIC]] code for capital ‹G› is 199 and for lowercase ‹g› is 135.

The [[numeric character reference]]s in [[HTML]] and [[XML]] are "<tt>&amp;#71;</tt>" and "<tt>&amp;#103;</tt>" for upper and lower case respectively.

==See also==
{{col-begin}}
{{col-3}}
*[[Ĝ|''Ĝ'' and ''ĝ'']]
*''[[Ğ]]''
*[[Carolingian G|Carolingian ''G'']]
*[[Hard and soft G]]
*[[Insular G|Insular ''G'']]
{{col-3}}
*[[Yogh]]
*[[Ge (Cyrillic)|Г, г - Ge (Cyrillic)]]
*[[Ѓ]]
*[[Gamma|Γ, γ - Gamma (Greek)]]
{{col-3}}
{{Commons|G}}
{{col-end}}

== References ==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2319181 Lewis and Short ''Latin Dictionary'': G]

{{Latin alphabet|G|}}

[[Category:Latin letters]]

[[ace:G]]
[[af:G]]
[[als:G]]
[[ar:G]]
[[an:G]]
[[arc:G]]
[[ast:G]]
[[az:G]]
[[zh-min-nan:G]]
[[be:G, літара]]
[[be-x-old:G (літара)]]
[[bs:G]]
[[br:G]]
[[bg:G]]
[[ca:G]]
[[cs:G]]
[[co:G]]
[[cy:G]]
[[da:G]]
[[de:G]]
[[dv:G]]
[[et:G]]
[[el:G]]
[[eml:G]]
[[es:G]]
[[eo:G]]
[[eu:G]]
[[fa:G]]
[[fr:G (lettre)]]
[[fy:G]]
[[fur:G]]
[[gv:Guilckagh (lettyr)]]
[[gd:G]]
[[gl:G]]
[[gan:G]]
[[xal:G үзг]]
[[ko:G]]
[[hr:G]]
[[ilo:G]]
[[id:G]]
[[is:G]]
[[it:G]]
[[he:G]]
[[ka:G]]
[[kw:G]]
[[sw:G]]
[[ht:G]]
[[ku:G (tîp)]]
[[la:G]]
[[lv:G]]
[[lb:G]]
[[lt:G]]
[[lmo:G]]
[[hu:G]]
[[mk:G (Латиница)]]
[[mg:G]]
[[mr:G]]
[[mzn:G]]
[[ms:G]]
[[my:G]]
[[nah:G]]
[[nl:G (letter)]]
[[ja:G]]
[[no:G]]
[[nn:G]]
[[nrm:G]]
[[uz:G (harf)]]
[[pl:G]]
[[pt:G]]
[[crh:G]]
[[ro:G]]
[[qu:G]]
[[ru:G (латиница)]]
[[se:G]]
[[stq:G]]
[[scn:G]]
[[simple:G]]
[[sk:G]]
[[sl:G]]
[[sr:G (слово латинице)]]
[[sh:G]]
[[fi:G]]
[[sv:G]]
[[tl:G]]
[[th:G]]
[[tr:G (harf)]]
[[uk:G (латиниця)]]
[[vi:G]]
[[vo:G]]
[[war:G]]
[[yi:G]]
[[yo:G]]
[[zh-yue:G]]
[[diq:G]]
[[bat-smg:G]]
[[zh:G]]