Ge (Cyrillic)
Ge or Ghe (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 , 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 (Γ) in uncial script. In the Early Cyrillic alphabet, its name was ("glagoli"), meaning "speak". In the Cyrillic numeral system, it had a numerical value of 3. Usage in  Slavic languages. South Slavic. In standard Serbian, Bosnian, 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 (sometimes referred to as "Ukrainian  Ge"): ("Bog, bogatyj, blago, Gospod’"). The sound is normally considered nonstandard or dialectal in Russian and is avoided by educated Russian speakers. ("Bog", "God") is always pronounced in the nominative case. In the Russian nominal genitive ending , Ghe represents , including in the word ("today", from ). It represents a voiceless (not ) in front of Ka in two Russian words, namely, and , 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" → , hamburger" → , "Haydn" → . 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 (especially from English), 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 (like in Southern Russian), 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 (Ґ ґ) in Ukrainian (transliterated with G) and with the digraph кг in Belarusian (also ґ in Taraškievica). Usage in non-Slavic languages. In many non-Slavic languages it can represent both and (the latter mostly in Turkic and some Finno-Ugric languages). 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 . Ge (Cyrillic