G

Eventually, both velar consonants /k/ and /ɡ/ developed palatalized allophones before front vowels, leading to the situation today's Romance languages where, ‹c› and ‹g› have different sound values depending on context. Because of French influence, English also has this feature in its orthography.

The modern lower case ‹g› has two typographic variants: the single-story (sometimes opentail) ‹› and the double-story (sometimes looptail) ‹›. 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 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".

In English, the letter represents a voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/ ("soft G"), as in: giant, ginger, and geology; or a voiced velar plosive /ɡ/ ("hard G"), as in: goose, gargoyle, and game. In some words of French origin, the "soft G" is pronounced as a fricative (/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›.

Several digraphs are common in English. ‹gh› which came about when the letter yogh was removed from the alphabet, and took various values including /ɡ/, /ɣ/, /x/, and /j/. It now has a great variety of values, including /f/ in enough, /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 /nj/ is also common in loanwords, as in lasagna (though initially, as in gnome, the ‹g› is simply silent).

In Maori (Te Reo Māori), ‹g› is used in the combination ‹ng› which represents the velar nasal /ŋ/ and is pronounced like the ‹ng› in singer.

[ see less ]