Ge with upturn

From Textus Receptus

Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ђ
Ѓ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О
П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	Ќ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ғ	Ҕ
Ӻ	Ӷ	Ԁ	Ԃ	Ӗ	Ӂ	Җ
Ӝ	Ԅ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ԑ	Ӡ	Ԇ
Ӣ	Ҋ	Ӥ	Қ	Ӄ	Ҡ	Ҟ
Ҝ	Ԟ	Ԛ	Ӆ	Ԓ	Ԡ	Ԉ
Ԕ	Ӎ	Ӊ	Ң	Ӈ	Ҥ	Ԣ
Ԋ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ	Ҩ	Ҧ	Ҏ
Ԗ	Ҫ	Ԍ	Ҭ	Ԏ	Ӯ	Ӱ
Ӳ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Ӽ	Ӿ	Һ
Ҵ	Ҷ	Ӵ	Ӌ	Ҹ	Ҽ	Ҿ
Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ	Ԙ	Ԝ	Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѻ	Ѹ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѣ	Ꙓ
Ꙗ	Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ
Ѱ	Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ	Ꙟ
List of Cyrillic letters
Cyrillic digraphs

Ge with upturn (Ґ, ґ; italics: Ґ, ґ) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet mainly used in Ukrainian, Urum and Rusyn. In these languages it is called Ge. It is also called Ghe, or by its Unicode name, CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER GHE WITH UPTURN.

It represents the voiced velar plosive /ɡ/, like the English pronunciation of ‹g› in "go".

The letterform of Ge with upturn is based on the Cyrillic letter Ge (Г, г), called He in Ukrainian, but its handwritten and italic lowercase forms do not follow the italic modification of Ge (г).

Contents 1 History 2 Code positions 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References

History

The common Slavic voiced velar plosive [ɡ] is represented in most Cyrillic orthographies by the letter ‹Г›, called Ge in most languages. In Ukrainian, however, sometime around the early thirteenth century, this sound lenited to the voiced velar fricative [ɣ] (except in the cluster *zg),^[] and around the sixteenth century debuccalized to the voiced glottal fricative [ɦ]^[] (pronounced like the ‹h› in English "behind"). The phoneme continued to be represented by ‹Г›, called He in Ukrainian.

Within a century after this sound change began, /ɡ/ was reintroduced from Western European loanwords. Since then, it has been represented by several different notations in writing.

In early Belarusian and Ukrainian orthographies, Latin ‹g› or the digraph ‹кг› (kh) were sometimes used to denote the sound of Latin ‹g› in assimilated words. Later the practice of distinguishing this sound and using the digraph disappeared from Belarusian orthography. In the nineteenth century, the letter ‹ґ›, serving an identical purpose, was introduced into the orthographies of Ukrainian and Rusyn language.

The letter ‹ґ› was eliminated from the Ukrainian alphabet in the Soviet orthographic reforms of 1933, its function subsumed into that of the letter ‹г›, pronounced /ɦ/ in Ukrainian. However, ‹ґ› continued to be used by Ukrainians in Galicia (under Poland until 1939) and in the Ukrainian diaspora worldwide. It was reintroduced to Soviet Ukraine in a 1990 orthographic reform under Glasnost.

During the twentieth century, some Belarusian linguists, notably Yan Stankyevich, promoted both the reintroduction of the practice of pronouncing Latin ‹g› in, at least, newly assimilated words, and the adoption of letter ‹ґ› to represent it. However, consensus on this has never been reached, and this letter has never been part of standard Belarusian alphabet, seeing only sporadic periods of use. For example, a code of alternative Belarusian orthography rules, based on the proposal of V. Vyachorka and published in 2005, has the optional letter ‹ґ› included in the alphabet, but not obligatory to be used and in any case it could be replaced by ‹г›.

Code positions

Character encoding	Case	Decimal	Hexadecimal	Octal	Binary
Unicode	Capital	1168	0490	002220	0000010010010000
	Small	1169	0491	002221	0000010010010001
Windows-1251	Capital	165	a5	245	10100101
	Small	180	b4	264	10110100
KOI8-U	Capital	189	bd	275	10111101
	Small	173	ad	255	10101101

See also

• G, g (Latin)
• Г, г - Ge (Cyrillic)

Notes

• 1. Shevelov (1977:145)
• 2. Shevelov (1977:148)

References

• George Y. Shevelov (1977). “On the Chronology of H and the New G in Ukrainian”, in Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol 1, no 2 (June 1977), pp 137–52. Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.
• Да рэформы беларускай азбукі. // Пасяджэньні Беларускае Акадэмічнае Конфэрэнцыі па рэформе правапісу і азбукі. - Мн.: [б. м.], [1927?].
• Ян Станкевіч. Гук «ґ» у беларускай мове // Ян Станкевіч. Збор твораў у двух тамах. Т. 2. - Мн.: Энцыклапедыкс, 2002. ISBN 985-6599-46-6