Ge,ghe, orhe (Г г; italics:Г г orГ г; italics:Г г) is a letter of theCyrillic script. Most commonly, it represents thevoiced velar plosive/ɡ/, like the⟨g⟩ in "gift", or thevoiced glottal fricative[ɦ], like the⟨h⟩ in "heft". It is generally romanized using the Latin letterg orh, depending on the source language.
InUkrainian andRusyn, a voiced velar plosive/ɡ/ is written with theCyrillic letter ghe with upturn (Ґ ґ). In Belarusian, the official orthography uses г for both/ɣ/ and/ɡ/ (which is rare), although inTaraškievica ghe with upturn is optionally used for/ɡ/. Ґ is transliterated withG.
In all three languages' historical ancestorRuthenian, the sound/ɡ/ was also represented by the digraph кг.
It is acceptable, for some people, to pronounce certain Russian words with[ɣ] (sometimes referred to asUkrainian Ge):Бог, богатый, благо, Господь (Bog, bogatyj, blago, Gospod’). The sound is normally considered nonstandard or dialectal in Russian and is avoided by educated Russian speakers.Бог (Bog, "God") is always pronounced[box] in thenominative case.[1]
In the Russian nominal genitive ending-ого, -его, ghe represents[v], including in the wordсегодня ("today", fromсего дня).
It represents a voiceless[x] (not[k]) in front ofka in two Russian words, namely,мягкий andлёгкий, and their derivatives.
The Latin letterh of words of Latin, Greek, English or German origin is usually transliterated into Russian with ghe rather thankha:hero →герой,hamburger →гамбургер,Haydn →Гайдн. That can occasionally cause ambiguity, as for example EnglishHarry andGary/Garry would be spelled the same in Russian, e.g.Гарри Поттер). The reasons for using ghe to writeh include the fact that ghe is used forh 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.[citation needed]
In theRussian Empire, the name of the letterglagol' was an informal reference to the Γ-shapedgallows:
Кругом пустыня, дичь и голь,
А в стороне торчит глаголь,
И на глаголе том два тела
Висят. Закаркав, отлетела
Ватага чёрная ворон,...
[All around there is desert, wilderness and bareness... And aglagol' sticks out on the side, And on thatglagol' two bodies hang. The gang of black crows croaked and flew off..]
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