Ġ

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Ġ (minuscule: ġ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from G with the addition of a dot above the letter. The dot is sometimes placed within the capital, rather than above.

Usage

Arabic

Ġ is used in some Arabic transliteration schemes, such as DIN 31635 and ISO 233, to represent the letter غ (ġayn).

Chechen

Ġ in Chechen Latin-based alphabet is an analog of Cyrillic гI.

Irish

Ġ was formerly used in Irish to represent the lenited form of G. The digraph gh is now used.

Maltese

Ġ is the 7th letter of the Maltese alphabet, preceded by F and followed by G. It represents a voiced postalveolar affricate (IPA: /dʒ/).

Old English

Ġ is sometimes used in scholarly representation of Old English to represent a soft g pronounced /j/, to distinguish it from /g/ which is otherwise spelled identically. The two sounds were not distinguished in Anglo-Saxon spelling.

Ukrainian

Ġ is used in some Ukrainian transliteration schemes, mainly ISO 9:1995, as the letter Ґ.

Phonetic transcription

ġ is sometimes used as a phonetic symbol. It can represent:

• a voiced velar fricative (IPA: /ɣ/)
• a velar nasal (IPA: /ŋ/)

Computer encoding

ISO 8859-3 (Latin-3) includes Ġ at D5 and ġ at F5 for use in Maltese, and ISO 8859-14 (Latin-8) includes Ġ at B2 and ġ at B3 for use in Irish.

Precomposed characters for Ġ and ġ have been present in Unicode since version 1.0. As part of WGL4, it can be expected to display correctly on most computer systems.