Ge (Cyrillic)


Ge or Ghe is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is also known in some languages as He. It commonly represents the voiced velar plosive, like in "gift".
It is generally romanized using the Latin letter G, but to romanize Belarusian, Ukrainian and Rusyn, the Latin letter H is used.

History

The Cyrillic letter Ghe was derived directly from the Greek letter Gamma in uncial script.
In the Early Cyrillic alphabet, its name was , meaning "speak".
In the Cyrillic numeral system, it had a numerical value of 3.

Usage in Slavic languages

South Slavic

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

Russian

In standard Russian, Ghe represents the voiced velar plosive but is devoiced to word-finally or before a voiceless consonant. It represents before a palatalizing vowel. In the Southern Russian dialect, the sound becomes the velar fricative. Sometimes, the sound is the glottal fricative in the regions bordering Belarus and Ukraine.
It is acceptable, for some people, to pronounce certain Russian words with : Бог, богатый, благо, Господь. The sound is normally considered nonstandard or dialectal in Russian and is avoided by educated Russian speakers. Бог is always pronounced in the nominative case.
In the Russian nominal genitive ending -ого, -его, Ghe represents, including in the word сегодня.
It represents a voiceless in front of Ka in two Russian words, namely, мягкий and лёгкий, 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 → герой, hamburger → гамбургер, Haydn → Гайдн. That can occasionally cause ambiguity, as for example English Harry and Gary/Garry would be spelled the same in Russian, eg. 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, Kha is often used.

Belarusian, Ukrainian and Rusyn

In Ukrainian and Rusyn, it represents a voiced glottal fricative, a breathy voiced counterpart of the English.
In Belarusian, the letter corresponds to the velar fricative and its soft counterpart.
In both languages, the letter is called He and transliterated with H rather than with G.
In Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian, a voiced velar plosive is written with the Cyrillic letter Ghe with upturn in Ukrainian and with the digraph кг in Belarusian.

Usage in non-Slavic languages

In many non-Slavic languages it can represent both and .
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.

Related letters and other similar characters