Typographic variants

Typographic variants include a double-storey and single-storey g.

The modern lowercase 'g' has two typographic variants: the single-storey (sometimes "opentail") '' and the double-storey (sometimes "looptail") ''. The single-storey form derives from the majuscule (uppercase) 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-storey form () had 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 left was absorbed into the upper closed bowl. The double-storey 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-storey version, a small top stroke in the upper-right, often terminating in an orb shape, is called an "ear".

Generally, the two forms are complementary, but occasionally the difference has been exploited to provide contrast. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, opentail ⟨ɡ⟩ has always represented a voiced velar plosive, while ⟨⟩ was distinguished from ⟨ɡ⟩ and represented a voiced velar fricative from 1895 to 1900.^[7][8] In 1948, the Council of the International Phonetic Association recognized ⟨ɡ⟩ and ⟨⟩ as typographic equivalents,^[9] and this decision was reaffirmed in 1993.^[10] While the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association recommended the use of ⟨⟩ for a velar plosive and ⟨ɡ⟩ for an advanced one for languages where it is preferable to distinguish the two, such as Russian,^[11] this practice never caught on.^[12] The 1999 Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, the successor to the Principles, abandoned the recommendation and acknowledged both shapes as acceptable variants.^[13]

Wong et al. (2018) found that native English speakers have little conscious awareness of the looptail form ().^[14][15] They write: "Despite being questioned repeatedly, and despite being informed directly that G has two lowercase print forms, nearly half of the participants failed to reveal any knowledge of the looptail 'g', and only 1 of the 38 participants was able to write looptail 'g' correctly."

In Unicode, the two appearances are generally treated as glyph variants with no semantic difference. Most serif typefaces use the looptail form (for example, g) and most sans-serif typefaces use the opentail form (for example, g) but the code point in both cases is U+0067. For applications where the single-storey variant must be distinguished (such as strict IPA in a typeface where the usual g character is double-storey), the character U+0261 ɡ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT G is available, as well as an upper case version, U+A7AC Ɡ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SCRIPT G.

English

In English, the letter appears either alone or in some digraphs. Alone, it represents

• a voiced velar plosive (/ɡ/ or "hard" ⟨g⟩), as in goose, gargoyle, and game;
• a voiced palato-alveolar affricate (/d͡ʒ/ or "soft" ⟨g⟩), predominates before ⟨i⟩ or ⟨e⟩, as in giant, ginger, and geology; or
• a voiced palato-alveolar sibilant (/ʒ/) in post-medieval loanwords from French, such as rouge, beige, genre (often), and margarine (rarely)

⟨g⟩ is predominantly soft before ⟨e⟩ (including the digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩), ⟨i⟩, or ⟨y⟩, and hard otherwise. It is hard in those derivations from γυνή (gynḗ) meaning woman where initial-worded as such. Soft ⟨g⟩ is also used in many words that came into English from medieval church/academic use, French, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese – these tend to, in other ways in English, closely align to their Ancient Latin and Greek roots (such as fragile, logic or magic). There remain widely used a few English words of non-Romance origin where ⟨g⟩ is hard followed by ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ (get, give, gift), and very few in which ⟨g⟩ is soft though followed by ⟨a⟩ such as gaol, which since the 20th century is almost always written as "jail".

The double consonant ⟨gg⟩ has the value /ɡ/ (hard ⟨g⟩) as in nugget, with very few exceptions: /d͡ʒ/ in exaggerate and veggies and dialectally /ɡd͡ʒ/ in suggest.

The digraph ⟨dg⟩ has the value /d͡ʒ/ (soft ⟨g⟩), as in badger. Non-digraph ⟨dg⟩ can also occur, in compounds like floodgate and headgear.

The digraph ⟨ng⟩ may represent:

• a velar nasal (/ŋ/) as in length, singer
• the latter followed by hard ⟨g⟩ (/ŋɡ/) as in jungle, finger, longest

Non-digraph ⟨ng⟩ also occurs, with possible values

• /nɡ/ as in engulf, ungainly
• /nd͡ʒ/ as in sponge, angel
• /nʒ/ as in melange

The digraph ⟨gh⟩ (in many cases a replacement for the obsolete letter yogh, which took various values including /ɡ/, /ɣ/, /x/ and /j/) may represent:

• /ɡ/ as in ghost, aghast, burgher, spaghetti
• /f/ as in cough, laugh, roughage
• ∅ (no sound) as in through, neighbor, night
• /x/ in ugh
• (rarely) /p/ in hiccough
• (rarely) /k/ in s'ghetti

Non-digraph ⟨gh⟩ also occurs, in compounds like foghorn, pigheaded.

The digraph ⟨gn⟩ may represent:

• /n/ as in gnostic, deign, foreigner, signage
• /nj/ in loanwords like champignon, lasagna

Non-digraph ⟨gn⟩ also occurs, as in signature, agnostic.

The trigraph ⟨ngh⟩ has the value /ŋ/ as in gingham or dinghy. Non-trigraph ⟨ngh⟩ also occurs, in compounds like stronghold and dunghill.

G is the tenth least frequently used letter in the English language (after Y, P, B, V, K, J, X, Q, and Z), with a frequency of about 2.02% in words.

Other languages

Most Romance languages and some Nordic languages also have two main pronunciations for ⟨g⟩, hard and soft. While the soft value of ⟨g⟩ varies in different Romance languages (/ʒ/ in French and Portuguese, [(d)ʒ] in Catalan, /d͡ʒ/ in Italian and Romanian, and /x/ in most dialects of Spanish), in all except Romanian and Italian, soft ⟨g⟩ has the same pronunciation as the ⟨j⟩.

In Italian and Romanian, ⟨gh⟩ is used to represent /ɡ/ before front vowels where ⟨g⟩ would otherwise represent a soft value. In Italian and French, ⟨gn⟩ is used to represent the palatal nasal /ɲ/, a sound somewhat similar to the ⟨ny⟩ in English canyon. In Italian, the trigraph ⟨gli⟩, when appearing before a vowel or as the article and pronoun gli, represents the palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/.

Other languages typically use ⟨g⟩ to represent /ɡ/ regardless of position.

Amongst European languages, Czech, Dutch, Estonian and Finnish are an exception as they do not have /ɡ/ in their native words. In Dutch, ⟨g⟩ represents a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ instead, a sound that does not occur in modern English, but there is a dialectal variation: many Netherlandic dialects use a voiceless fricative ([x] or [χ]) instead, and in southern dialects it may be palatal [ʝ]. Nevertheless, word-finally it is always voiceless in all dialects, including the standard Dutch of Belgium and the Netherlands. On the other hand, some dialects (like Amelands) may have a phonemic /ɡ/.

Faroese uses ⟨g⟩ to represent /dʒ/, in addition to /ɡ/, and also uses it to indicate a glide.

In Māori, ⟨g⟩ is used in the digraph ⟨ng⟩ which represents the velar nasal /ŋ/ and is pronounced like the ⟨ng⟩ in singer.

The Samoan and Fijian languages use the letter ⟨g⟩ by itself for /ŋ/.

In older Czech and Slovak orthographies, ⟨g⟩ was used to represent /j/, while /ɡ/ was written as ⟨ǧ⟩ (⟨g⟩ with caron).

The Azerbaijani Latin alphabet uses ⟨g⟩ exclusively for the "soft" sound, namely /ɟ/. The sound /ɡ/ is written as ⟨q⟩. This leads to unusual spellings of loanwords: qram 'gram', qrup 'group', qaraj 'garage', qallium 'gallium'.

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

• 𐤂 : Semitic letter Gimel, from which the following symbols originally derive
• C c : Latin letter C, from which G derives
• Γ γ : Greek letter Gamma, from which C derives in turn
• ɡ : Latin letter script small G
• ᶢ : Modifier letter small script g is used for phonetic transcription^[16]
• 𝼁 : Latin small letter reversed script g, an extension to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA)^[17][18]
• ᵷ : Turned g
• 𝼂 : Latin letter small capital turned g, an extension to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA)^[17][18]
• Г г : Cyrillic letter Ge
• Ȝ ȝ : Latin letter Yogh
• Ɣ ɣ : Latin letter Gamma
• Ᵹ ᵹ : Insular g
• ᫌ : Combining insular g, used in the Ormulum^[19]
• Ꝿ ꝿ : Turned insular g
• Ꟑ ꟑ : Closed insular g, used in the Ormulum^[19]
• ɢ : Latin letter small capital G, used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent a voiced uvular stop
• 𐞒 : Modifier letter small capital G, used as a superscript IPA letter^[20]
• ʛ : Latin letter small capital G with hook, used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent a voiced uvular implosive
• 𐞔 : Modifier letter small capital G with hook, used as a superscript IPA letter^[20]
• 𐞓 : Modifier letter small g with hook, used as a superscript IPA letter^[20]
• ᴳ ᵍ : Modifier letters are used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet^[21]
• ꬶ : Used for the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system^[22]
• G with diacritics: Ǵ ǵ Ǥ ǥ Ĝ ĝ Ǧ ǧ Ğ ğ Ģ ģ Ɠ ɠ Ġ ġ Ḡ ḡ Ꞡ ꞡ ᶃ
• ց : Armenian alphabet Tso

Ligatures and abbreviations

• ₲ : Paraguayan guaraní