G

G (minuscule: g) is the seventh letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other Western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is gee (pronounced ), plural gees.

The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the single-storey (sometimes "opentail") g and the double-storey (sometimes "looptail") g. The former is commonly used in handwriting and typefaces based on it, especially in texts intended to be read by children; it is the style used by most sans-serif typefaces, such as Helvetica. The latter form is used by most serif typefaces, such as Times.

History

The evolution of the Latin alphabet's G can be traced back to the Latin alphabet's predecessor, the Greek alphabet. The voiced velar stop was represented by the third letter of the Greek alphabet, gamma (Γ), which was later adopted by the Etruscan language. Latin then borrowed this "rounded form" of gamma, C, to represent the same sound in words such as recei, which was likely an early dative form of rex, meaning "king", as found in an "early Latin inscription." Over time, however, the letter C shifted to represent the voiceless velar stop, leading to the displacement of the letter K. Scholars believe that this change can be attributed to the influence of the Etruscan language on Latin.

Afterwards, the letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of 'C' to distinguish voiced /ɡ/ from voiceless /k/, and G was used to represent a voiced velar stop from this point on and C "stood for the unvoiced velar only".

The recorded originator of 'G' is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, who added letter G to the teaching of the Roman alphabet during the 3rd century BCE: he was the first Roman to open a fee-paying school, around 230 BCE. At this time, 'K' had fallen out of favor, and 'C', which had formerly represented both /ɡ/ and /k/ before open vowels, had come to express /k/ in all environments.