G

Latin alphabet Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

G is the seventh letter in the Roman alphabet. Its name in English is gee.

History

The letter G was created by the Romans because they felt that C was not an adequate letter to represent both /k/ and /g/.

Hebrew gimel

Phoenician gimel

Classical Greek gamma

Early Latin

Late Latin

The alleged inventor is a known historical figure, Spurius Carvilius Ruga (who flourished around 230 BC). G, which at this time took the place in the alphabet formerly held by Z, came to represent the sound /g/. As the sound /k/ did, /g/ also developed palatal and velar allophones which is why today, G has different sound values in all Romance languages, as well as English (due to French influence).

The modern minuscule (lower-case) G has two basic shapes: the "opentail G" and the "looptail G" . The opentail version derives from the majuscule (capital) form by raising the serif that distinguishes it from a C to the top of the loop, thereby closing the loop, and extending the vertical stroke downward and to the left. The looptail form developed similarly, except that some ornate forms then extended the tail back to the right, and to the left again, forming a loop. The initial extension to the left was absorbed into the upper loop. The looptail 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. And in the looptail version, there is a tiny flick at the upper right which in typography is called its "ear."

Generally, the two minuscule forms are interchangeable, but occasionally the difference has been exploited to make a contrast. The 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association recommends using for advanced voiced velar plosives and for regular ones where the two are contrasted, but this suggestion was never accepted by phoneticians in general, and today is the symbol used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, with acknowledged as an acceptable variant.

Usage

In English, the letter can be pronounced as a "soft G" (IPA /dʒ/), as in: giant, ginger, geology, or as a "hard G" (IPA /g/), as in: goose, gargoyle, game. In some words of French origin, as in French generally, the "soft G" is pronounced as IPA /ʒ/, as in rouge, beige, and genre. Generally, G is soft before E, I, and Y, and hard otherwise, but there are many English words of non-Romance origin where G is hard regardless of position, and two (gaol and margarine) in which it is soft even before an A.

Most non-Romance languages pronounce G as /g/ regardless of position (however the Dutch language does not have a /g/ sound in its native words, and instead G is pronounced /ɣ/, a sound that does not occur in English) while in Romance languages the soft value varies, such as /ʒ/ in French, Catalan, and Portuguese, /ʤ/ in Italian, and /x/ in Spanish. The general rule is that soft G is pronounced the same as the J of the same language.

Several digraphs are common in English. GH originally represented the letter yogh which English adopted from Old Irish, and took various values including /g/, /ɣ/, /x/, and /j/. It now has a great variety of values, including /f/ in enough, /g/ in loan words like spaghetti, and silence in words like eight and night. GN, with value /n/, is also common, as in sign.

In Italian, GH is used to force a /g/ value before E and I where G would take a soft value, and GN is used for /ɲ/ (rather like English NY in canyon).

In Spanish, G before I or E is pronounced as the same as J. The Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez proposed to simplify the Spanish spelling by using just the versions with j. The rest of Spanish speakers did not follow him, but his works, and the translations of Rabindranath Tagore made by Jiménez's wife Zenobia Camprubí, are published in his spelling.

Alternative representations

Golf represents the letter G in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In international Morse code the letter G is DahDahDit: - - ·

In Braille the letter G is represented as ⠛ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,

XX
XX
..

Computing

In Unicode the capital G is codepoint U+0047 and the lowercase g is U+0067.

The ASCII code for capital G is 71 and for lowercase g is 103; or in binary 01000111 and 01100111, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital G is 199 and for lowercase g is 135.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "G" and "g" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings for G

• In architecture, often seen in elevators, G stands for the "Ground Floor" or "General Floor", usually the main entrance floor.
• In biochemistry,
  • G is the symbol for glycine and guanosine.
  • G is a type of protein.

• In the RGB color model, G stands for the color green.
• In programming languages,
  • G is the graphical programming language used in LabVIEW.
• In computer games,
  • G is a character in Sega's House of the Dead series of arcade games,
  • G is the name of a currency in some computer role-playing games, meaning gold.
  • 'G' is the class of gnomes and 'g' is a gremlin in the Roguelike game NetHack.
• In computing, G is a binary prefix for giga, meaning 2³⁰ = 1,073,741,824 (cf. G as an SI prefix in the Metric system, given below)
• In electrical engineering, G is often used as the name of the variable for conductance.
• In English slang, g is short for "gangsta" or gangster.
• In film,
  • G is a rating given by the Motion Picture Association of America, meaning the film is suitable for all ("general") audiences.
  • G is also the name of a British film from 1974. An American film, also called G, was released as an independent film in 2002; it was released to movie theaters in 2005.
• In finance, G is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol for The Gillette Company
• In international licence plate codes, G stands for Gabon.
• In literature, G. is the title of a book by John Berger. This book was awarded the Booker Prize 1972.
• In the SI system,
  • capital G is the SI prefix for giga, meaning 10⁹ = 1,000,000,000.
  • lowercase g is the symbol for a unit of mass, the gram.
• In the CGS system,
  • capital G is also the symbol for the unit of magnetic induction, the gauss.
• In music, G is a note.
• In physics,
  • G is the gravitational constant.
  • g (always in lowercase) is the unit of acceleration due to gravity.
• As the first letter of a postal code,
  • In Canada, G stands for the eastern part of Quebec.
  • In the United Kingdom, G stands for Glasgow.
• In psychometrics, g (always in lowercase) is the symbol for general intelligence.
• In radiocommunication, G is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to the United Kingdom.
• In sexology, the G-spot is a part of the vagina that allegedly causes an orgasm when stimulated.
• In television, G is the TV Rating that stands for General, meaning the program is appropriate for everyone.
• In economics, G is usually used to represent government spending or government expenditure.

See also

• Ĝ and ĝ
• Ğ and ğ
• Carolingian G
• Insular G