Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Gha

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Gha

The letter Ƣ (minuscule: ƣ) has been used in the Latin orthographies of various, mostly Turkic languages, such as Azeri or the Jaꞑalif orthography for Tatar. It usually represents a voiced velar fricative [ɣ] but is sometimes used for a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]. All orthographies using it have been phased out, so the letter is not well-supported in fonts. It can still be seen in pre-1983 books published by the People’s Republic of China.

Contents

Historically, it is derived from a handwritten form of the small Latin letter q, around 1900. The majuscule is then based on the minuscule. Its use for [ɣ] stems from the linguistic tradition of representing such sounds (and similars) by q in Turkic languages and in transcriptions of Arabic or Persian (compare kaf and qaf).

In alphabetical order, it comes between G and H.

Unrelated letters transcribed gh, typically representing a voiced aspirated stop /gʱ/ rather than a fricative, occur in scripts descended from Brāhmī script.

Modern replacements

  • Azerbaijani: Ğ, ğ
  • Tatar: Г, г (Cyrillic), Ğ, ğ (Latin)
  • Bashkir: Ғ, ғ
  • Kazakh: Ғ, ғ
  • Uyghur: غ (Arabic), Ғ, ғ (Cyrillic), Gh, gh (Latin)
  • Yakut: Ҕ, ҕ
  • Uzbek: Ғ, ғ (Cyrillic), Gʻ, gʻ (Latin)
  • Tajik: Ғ, ғ
  • Unicode

    In Unicode, the majuscule Ƣ is encoded in the Latin Extended-B block at U+01A2 and the minuscule ƣ is encoded at U+01A3. The assigned names, "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OI" and "LATIN SMALL LETTER OI" respectively, are acknowledged by the Unicode Consortium to be mistakes, as gha is unrelated to the letters O and I.

    References

    Gha Wikipedia