The letter Ƣ (minuscule: ƣ) was used in the Latin orthographies of various, mostly Turkic languages, such as Azeri or the Jaꞑalif orthography for Tatar. It was also included in the pinyin-based alphabets for Kazakh and Uyghur and in the 1928 Soviet Kurdish Latin alphabet. It usually represents a voiced velar fricative but is sometimes used for a voiced uvular fricative . All orthographies that used the letter were phased out, and it is not supported in all Latin fonts. It can still be seen in pre-1983 books published in the People’s Republic of China.
class=skin-invert-image|thumb|upright=0.68|Letters Q and q of [[Sütterlin script]]
Historically, it is derived from a handwritten form of the small Latin letter q around 1900. The majuscule is then based on the minuscule. Its use for stems from the linguistic tradition of representing such sounds (and similar ones) by q in Turkic languages and in transcriptions of Arabic or Persian (compare kaf and qaf).
In alphabetical order, it comes between G and H.
Modern replacements
- Abaza: ГЪ, гъ
- Abkhaz: Ҕ, ҕ/Ӷ, ӷ
- Avar: ГЪ, гъ
- Azerbaijani: Ğ, ğ
- Bashkir: Ғ, ғ
- Crimean Tatar: Ğ, ğ (Latin), ГЪ, гъ (Cyrillic)
- Dargin (literary): ГЪ, гъ
- Kabardian: ГЪ, гъ (Cyrillic), Ğ, ğ (Latin),
- Karachay-Balkar: ГЪ, гъ
- Karaim: ГЪ, гъ (Cyrillic), G, g (Latin)
- Karakalpak: Ǵ, ǵ (Latin), Ғ, ғ (Cyrillic)
- Kazakh: Ğ, ğ (Latin), Ғ, ғ (Cyrillic), ع (Arabic)
- Khakas: Ғ, ғ
- Kumyk: ГЪ, гъ
- Kurdish: غ (Arabic), x/ẍ (Latin)
- Kyrgyz: Г, г (Cyrillic), ع (Arabic)
- Lak: ГЪ, гъ
- Laz: ღ (Georgian), Ğ, ğ (Latin)
- Lezgi: ГЪ, гъ
- Nogai: Г, г
- Tajik: Ғ, ғ
- Talysh: Ğ, ğ (Latin), غ (Persian), Ғ, ғ (Cyrillic)
- Tat: Ğ, ğ (Latin), ГЪ, гъ (Cyrillic)
- Tatar: Г, г (Cyrillic), Ğ, ğ (Latin)
- Tsakhur: ГЪ, гъ (Cyrillic), Ğ, ğ (Latin)
- Turkmen: G, g
- Tuvan: Г, г
- Udin: Ğ, ğ (Latin), ГЪ, гъ (Cyrillic)
- Urum: Ґ, ґ; Ғ, ғ
- Uyghur: غ (Arabic), Ғ, ғ (Cyrillic), Gh, gh (Latin)
- Uzbek: Gʻ, gʻ (Latin), Ғ, ғ (Cyrillic)
- Yakut: Ҕ, ҕ
Unicode
In Unicode, the majuscule Ƣ is encoded in the Latin Extended-B block at U+01A2 and the minuscule ƣ is encoded at U+01A3. The assigned names, "" and "" respectively, are acknowledged by the Unicode Consortium to be mistakes, as gha is unrelated to the letters O and I. The Unicode Consortium therefore has provided the character name aliases "" and "".