thumb|Ge, from [[Alexandre Benois' 1904 alphabet book]]

Ge, ghe, or he (Г г; italics: Г г or <span style="font-family: times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: larger">Г&nbsp;г</span>; italics: <span style="font-family: times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: larger">Г&nbsp;г</span>) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Most commonly, it represents the voiced velar plosive , like the in "gift", or the voiced glottal fricative , like the in "heft". It is generally romanized using the Latin letter g or h, depending on the source language.

History

The Cyrillic letter ge was derived directly from the Greek letter Gamma (Γ) in uncial script.

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet, its name was глаголь (glagol' ), meaning "speak".

In the Cyrillic numeral system, it had a numerical value of 3.

Usage

Slavic languages

100px|thumb|left|Г in:<br>Russian/Serbian normal font;<br>Bulgarian Cyrillic;<br>Russian/Bulgarian italic;<br>Serbian italic

Belarusian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian

From these three languages, the letter is romanized with h. Its name is he in Belarusian and Ukrainian, and hy in Rusyn.

In Belarusian (like in Southern Russian), the letter corresponds to the velar fricative

In the Russian nominal genitive ending , ghe represents , including in the word ("today", from ).

It represents a voiceless (not ) in front of ka in two Russian words, namely, and , and their derivatives.

The Latin letter h of words of Latin, Greek, English or German origin is usually transliterated into Russian with ghe rather than kha: hero → , hamburger → , Haydn → . That can occasionally cause ambiguity, as for example English Harry and Gary/Garry would be spelled the same in Russian, e.g. Гарри Поттер). The reasons for using ghe to write h include the fact that ghe is used for h in Ukrainian, Belarusian and some Russian dialects, along with the perception that kha sounds too harsh. Nevertheless, in newer loanwords (especially from English), kha has supplanted ghe, e.g. "hit" → .

South Slavic

In standard Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Bulgarian and Macedonian the letter ghe represents a voiced velar plosive . In Bulgarian and Macedonian, it is also devoiced to word-finally or before a voiceless consonant.

Usage in non-Slavic languages

In many non-Slavic languages it can represent both and (the latter mostly in Turkic and some Finno-Ugric languages).

In Ossetian, an Indo-Iranian language spoken in the Caucasus, ⟨г⟩ represents the voiced velar stop . However, the digraph ⟨гъ⟩ represents the voiced uvular fricative .

Cultural references

In the Russian Empire, the name of the letter glagol was an informal reference to the Γ-shaped gallows:

: Кругом пустыня, дичь и голь,

: А в стороне торчит глаголь,

: И на глаголе том два тела

: Висят. Закаркав, отлетела

: Ватага чёрная ворон,...

: [All around there is desert, wilderness and bareness... And a glagol sticks out on the side, And on that glagol two bodies hang. The gang of black crows croaked and flew off..]

:: Alexander Pushkin, 1836

  • Γ γ: Greek letter Gamma
  • G g: Latin letter G
  • H h: Latin letter H, romanized as in Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Rusyn
  • Z z: Latin letter Z, alternative form of italicized Cyrillic Г (ge)
  • Ґ ґ: Cyrillic letter ghe with upturn, the letter g, named ge in Ukrainian
  • Ѓ ѓ: Cyrillic letter Gje
  • Ғ ғ: Cyrillic letter Ghayn
  • R r: Latin letter R (lowercase)
  • ₴: Ukrainian hryvnia (Currency sign)
  • Г̇ г̇: Ge with dot above, used by Nikolai Katanov to transliterate the Arabic letter ghayn (غ).

Computing codes

References