Ge (Cyrillic)

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Heading=Cyrillic letter Ge


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Ge or He (Г, г, italics: "Г", "г") is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing IPA|/g/ or IPA|/ɦ/ in different languages.

It arose directly from the Greek letter gamma and both capital and small Ge look like the capital letter gamma.

In standard Serbian, Bulgarian and Macedonian languages Ge always represents voiced velar plosive IPA|/g/, i.e., it is pronounced like the G in English "go".

In standard Russian, it represents a voiced velar plosive except when it is devoiced to IPA| [k] word-finally or before a voiceless consonant and represents IPA| [gʲ] before a palatalizing vowel. Also, in some masculine genitive and accusative case word endings, it represents IPA|/v/ when found between two vowels. In south-western Russia, the sound becomes a fricative IPA| [ɣ] , and sometimes IPA| [ɦ] in regions bordering Belarus and Ukraine. It is acceptable to pronounce certain Russian words with IPA| [ɣ] (referred to as "Ukrainian "г"): "Бог, богатый, благо, Господь," although, not all speakers use or agree with this. This sound is normally considered non-standard or dialectal in Russian and is avoided by educated Russian speakers. "Бог" (in nominative case) is always pronounced /box/. [ " [http://www.gramota.ru/book/village/map14.html Zvuki na meste bukvy g] " (Sounds in place of the letter г), map 14 in the Scholarly Dialectical Atlas ]

In the adjective/pronoun ending "-ого, -его" letter г is pronounced as [v] (Russian only), including the word "сегодня" (from "сего дня") - "today" .

Letter г is devoiced to to IPA| [x] , not to IPA| [k] in front of letter "к" in Russian in 2 words: "мягкий" and "лёгкий" and all the derivatives where "гк" are spelled together.

In the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages it is called "He", and represents a voiced glottal fricative IPA|/ɦ/ ()—a voiced counterpart of the English h.

In Ukrainian, a voiced velar plosive is rarely present, and when present it is to be written with the Ukrainian letter ge with upturn (Ґ, ґ). In the Belarusian language, it was supposedly more frequent (to render words borrowed from Polish and Russian), but during the twentieth century the distinction in usage blurred significantly. Reintroduction of ge into the Belarusian alphabet is only proposed by some linguists and not supported officially.

Code positions

Its HTML entities are: Г or Г for capital and г or г for small letter.

Notes

ee also

*Gje
*Ghe
*G, g - Latin
*Γ, γ - Gamma (Greek)