Ge (Cyrillic)

For the letter also named Ghe or Ge, but used in Ukrainian and sometimes in Belarusian, see Ghe with upturn.

Ghe or Ge (Г г; italics: Г г) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is also known in some languages as He. It commonly represents the voiced velar plosive /ɡ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨g⟩ in "go".

Ghe is generally romanized using the Latin letter G; but when romanizing Belarusian, Ukrainian and Rusyn, the Latin letter H is used.

History

The Cyrillic letter Ghe was derived directly from the Greek letter Gamma (Γ γ), but the lowercase Ghe is a small version of the capital letter.

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was глаголи (ɡlaɡoli), meaning "speak".

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

Usage

Macedonian and Serbian

In standard Macedonian and Serbian, Ghe always represents the voiced velar plosive [ɡ].

Russian

In standard Russian, Ghe represents the voiced velar plosive [ɡ], except when it is devoiced to [k] word-finally or before a voiceless consonant, and it represents [ɡʲ] before a palatalizing vowel. In south-western Russia, the sound becomes the velar fricative [ɣ], and sometimes the glottal fricative [ɦ] in regions bordering Belarus and Ukraine.

It is acceptable to pronounce certain Russian words with [ɣ] (referred to as Ukrainian Ge): Бог, богатый, благо, Господь (Bog, bogatyj, blago, Gospod’), although not all speakers use or agree with this. The sound is normally considered non-standard or dialectal in Russian and is avoided by educated Russian speakers. Бог (Bog, "God") is always pronounced [box] in the nominative case.

In the Russian adjective/pronoun ending -ого, -его, Ghe represents [v], including in the word сегодня ("today", from сего дня).

The letter Ghe represents a voiceless [x] (not [k]) in front of the letter Ka in two Russian words, namely, мягкий and лёгкий.

The Latin letter H at the beginning of a word is transliterated into Russian with Ghe rather than Kha as one might expect, for historical reasons of phonology/orthography, e.g. hero → герой.^{[citation needed]}

Bulgarian

In Bulgarian, the letter Ghe represents a voiced velar plosive [ɡ], except when it is devoiced to [k] word-finally or before a voiceless consonant, and represents [ɡʲ] before a palatalizing vowel.

Belarusian and Ukrainian

In Belarusian and Ukrainian, Ghe is called He, and represents a voiced glottal fricative [ɦ]—a breathy voiced counterpart of the English [h], (listen).

In Ukrainian, a voiced velar plosive [ɡ] is rarely present, and when present it is written with the Cyrillic letter Ghe with upturn (Ґ ґ).

Related letters and other similar characters

• Γ γ : Greek letter Gamma
• G g : Latin letter G
• Ґ ґ : Cyrillic letter Ghe with upturn, now just named ghe (or ge) in Ukrainian
• Ѓ ѓ : Cyrillic letter Gje
• ₴: Ukrainian hryvnia (Currency sign)

Computing codes

character	Г		г
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER GHE		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1043	0413	1075	0433
UTF-8	208 147	D0 93	208 179	D0 B3
Numeric character reference	Г	Г	г	г
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	231	E7	199	C7
CP 855	173	AD	172	AC
Windows-1251	195	C3	227	E3
ISO-8859-5	179	B3	211	D3
Mac Cyrillic	131	83	227	E3

External links

• The Wiktionary entry for Г
• The Wiktionary entry for г