The Carolingian G or French G (𝗴) is the evolved classical form of the letter '' G'' that was in use in most

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...

s. The other form scholars and writers familiar with

Celtic Britain The British Iron Age is a conventional name used in the archaeology of Great Britain, referring to the prehistoric and protohistoric phases of the Iron Age culture of the main island and the smaller islands, typically excluding prehistoric Ire ...

generally knew and could use, and in the furthest places in Britain away from

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

exclusively used domestically, was the insular (or Irish) G, which could bear a well-understood extra phonetic sense, when writing of the local people, places and language. Unlike the vowel u and consonants which could appear ambiguous such as s, it had no special rules as to choice of letter in

Middle English orthography Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...

. The form is named for the

Carolingian minuscule Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one reg ...

script, an exemplar of its use and which features in papal manuscripts.The History of G
MedievalWriting.com. Accessed March 30, 2012.

Context

Its forms, varying little, are the basis of and frequently match the modern letter G. Insular G evolved very largely into digraphs ''gh'', ''ch'', but in its early days some writers used it for

yogh The letter yogh (ȝogh) ( ; Scots Language, Scots: ; Middle English: ) was used in Middle English and Older Scots, representing ''y'' () and various velar consonant , velar phonemes. It was derived from the Insular G, Insular form of the letter ...

. Yogh dissolved in Scottish proper names to ''z'' due to its lower case equivalent written look but in loanwords often to ''y'' or ''i'' to reserve z for the rising number of Greek loanwords featuring z such as zodiac and to distinguish words such as zeal (from seal). By the 18th century the script had 26 base characters for letters (with upper case counterparts) promulgated by most major

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in wh ...

es and taught in alphabet

nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. From t ...

s. This was a re-evolution to go beyond late medieval

Ecclesiastical Latin Latin, also called Church Latin or Liturgical Latin, is a form of Latin developed to discuss Christian thought in Late Antiquity and used in Christian liturgy, theology, and church administration down to the present day, especially in the Cathol ...

's clipped content of 22–23 letters. Despite this widening across most, then almost all, formal teaching in Europe, g has a quite diverse

phonetic value Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the I ...

across languages following its development from c, which shares this trait. It is the standard letter form for ''G'' in all modern

Latin-script alphabet A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. The 26-letter ...

Footnotes

G - Carolingian Carolingian art Middle English {{Latin-script-stub