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In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, the letter is used in different contexts to represent two distinct
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s that in English are called hard and soft . The sound of a hard (which often precedes the non-front vowels or a consonant) is usually the voiced velar plosive (as in ''gangrene'' or ''golf)'' while the sound of a soft (typically before , , or ) may be a
fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
or
affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...
, depending on the language. In English, the sound of soft is the affricate , as in ''general'', ''giant'', and ''gym.'' A at the end of a word usually renders a hard (as in "rag"), while if a soft rendition is intended it would be followed by a silent (as in "rage").


History

This alternation has its origins in a historical palatalization of which took place in
Late Latin Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in t ...
, and led to a change in the pronunciation of the sound before the
front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherw ...
s and . Later, other languages not descended from Latin, such as English, inherited this feature as an orthographic convention. The
Scandinavian languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is als ...
, however, have undergone their shift independently.


English

In
English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, ...
, the pronunciation of hard is and that of soft is ; the French soft , , survives in a number of French loanwords (e.g. ''regime'', ''genre''), also sometimes occurs as an allophone of ʒin some accents in certain words. In words of Greco-
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
ate origin, the soft pronunciation occurs before while the hard pronunciation occurs elsewhere. In some words of Germanic origin (e.g. ''get'', ''give''), loan words from other languages (e.g. ''geisha'', ''pierogi''), and irregular Greco-Latinate words (e.g. ''gynecology''), the hard pronunciation may occur before as well. The orthography of soft is fairly consistent: a soft is almost always followed by . The notable exceptions are ''gaol'' (now more commonly spelled ''jail'') and ''margarine'' (a French borrowing whose original hard softened for unknown reasons, even though the name ''Margaret'' has a hard ). The soft pronunciation of ''algae'', the only one heard in North America, is sometimes cited as an exception, but it is actually conformant, being an alternate spelling for a vowel in the family. Though this pronunciation is listed first in some British dictionaries, hard pronunciation due to misinterpretation of the digraph is widespread in British English and is listed second or alone in some British dictionaries. In some words, a soft has lost its trailing due to suffixing, but the combination would imply the soft pronunciation anyway (e.g. ''fledgling'', ''judgment'', ''pledgor''). Digraphs and trigraphs, such as , , and , have their own pronunciation rules. While , which also has hard and soft pronunciations, exists alongside (which always indicates a hard pronunciation), has no analogous letter or letter combination which consistently indicates a hard sound, even though English uses consistently for the ''soft'' sound (the rationale for the spelling change of "gaol" to "jail"). This leads to special issues regarding the "neatness" of orthography when suffixes are added to words that end in a hard- sound. This additionally leads to many words spelled with g and pronounced with a hard , including what may be the most common g word "get". It has also resulted in the file format GIF having two possible pronunciations, with both hard and soft in common use.


Suffixation

When suffixes are added to words ending with a hard or soft , the sound is normally maintained. Sometimes the normal rules of spelling changes before suffixes can help signal whether the hard or soft sound is intended. For example, as an accidental byproduct of the rule that doubles consonants in this situation after a short vowel, a double will normally indicate the hard pronunciation (e.g. ''bagged'' is pronounced , not as ). There are occasional exceptions where alternations between the hard and soft sound occur before different suffixes. Examples are ''analogous'' (hard) vs. ''analogy'' (soft); similarly, ''prodigal'' with ''prodigy''. These are generally cases where the entire word, including the suffix, has been imported from Latin, and the general Romance-language pattern of soft before front vowels, but hard otherwise, is preserved. Sometimes a silent letter is added to help indicate pronunciation. For example, a silent usually indicates the soft pronunciation, as in ''change''; this may be maintained before a suffix to indicate this pronunciation (as in ''changeable''), despite the rule that usually drops this letter. A silent can also indicate a soft pronunciation, particularly with the suffixes ''-gion'' and ''-gious'' (as in ''region'', ''contagious''). A silent can indicate a hard pronunciation in words borrowed from French (as in ''analogue'', ''league'', ''guide'') or words influenced by French spelling conventions (''guess'', ''guest''); a silent serves a similar purpose in Italian-derived words (''ghetto'', ''spaghetti''). A silent can occur at the end of a word – or at the end of a component root word that is part of a larger word – after as well as word-internally. In this situation, the usually serves a marking function that helps to indicate that the immediately before it is soft. Examples include ''image'', ''management'', and ''pigeon''. Such a silent also indicates that the vowel before is a historic
long vowel In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
, as in ''rage'', ''oblige'', and ''range''. When adding one of the above suffixes, this silent is often dropped and the soft pronunciation remains. While commonly indicates a soft pronunciation, the silent may be dropped before another consonant while retaining the soft pronunciation in a number of words such ''judgment'' and ''abridgment.'' Also, the word ''veg'', a clipped form of ''vegetate'', retains the soft pronunciation despite being spelled without a silent (i.e., pronounced as if spelled ''vedge''). Similarly, soft is sometimes replaced by in some names of commercial entities, such as with "Enerjy Software", or "Majic 105.7" in
Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S ...
and some names commonly spelled with are given unusual soft spellings such as ''Genna'' and ''Gennifer''.


Letter combinations

English has many words of
Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...
origin, especially from French and Italian. The ones from Italian often retain the conventions of
Italian orthography Italian orthography (writing) uses a variant of the Latin alphabet consisting of 21 letters to write the Italian language. This article focuses on the writing of Standard Italian, based historically on the Florentine dialect. Italian orthography ...
whereby represents hard before ''e'' and ''i'' and ''gi'' and ''ge'' represent soft (often even without any semivowel/vowel sound, thus representing /dʒ/ just as ''j'' usually does in
English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, ...
). The ones from French and Spanish often retain the conventions of
French orthography French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language. It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100–1200 AD, a ...
and
Spanish orthography Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English, having a relatively consistent mapping ...
whereby represents hard before ''e'' and ''i'' and ''gi'' and ''ge'' represent soft (often realized as /ʒ/ in French and as /h/ or /χ/ in Spanish). A consequence of these orthographic tendencies is that ''g'' before ''o'' or ''a'' is ''almost never'' soft in English—one way in which English orthography, which is generally not especially
phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
or regular, displays strong regularity in at least one aspect. A few exceptions include ''
turgor Turgor pressure is the force within the cell that pushes the plasma membrane against the cell wall. It is also called ''hydrostatic pressure'', and is defined as the pressure in a fluid measured at a certain point within itself when at equilibri ...
'' and ''
digoxin Digoxin (better known as Digitalis), sold under the brand name Lanoxin among others, is a medication used to treat various heart conditions. Most frequently it is used for atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, and heart failure. Digoxin is o ...
'', for which the most common pronunciations use soft despite the lack of "softness signal" ''gi'' or ''ge''. But both of those words also have hard pronunciations that are accepted variants, which reflects the
spelling pronunciation A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronounc ...
pressure generated by the strong regularity of the digraph conventions. A number of two-letter combinations (digraphs) follow their own pronunciation patterns and, as such, may not follow the hard/soft distinction of . For example, often represents (as in ''ring'') or as in ''finger''. The letters , when final, represent , as in ''orange''; when not final their pronunciation varies according to the word's etymology (e.g. in ''danger'', in ''anger'', in ''banger''). In most cases, represents as in ''dagger'', but it may also represent as in ''suggest'' and ''exaggerate''. (The same pair of facts can also be said of how relates to
hard and soft C In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft occurs in which represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard often precedes the non-front vowels , and , and is that ...
, as, for example, in '' succinct'' and '' flaccid''.) Other letter combinations that don't follow the paradigm include , , and . The digraph is sometimes used to indicate a hard pronunciation before (e.g. ''guess'', ''guitar'', ''
Guinness Guinness () is an Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin, Ireland, in 1759. It is one of the most successful alcohol brands worldwide, brewed in almost 50 countries, and available in ov ...
''), including cases where is silent (e.g., ''rogue'', ''intrigue'', ''catalogue'', ''analogue''). In some cases, the intervening is pronounced as /w/ (''distinguish'', ''unguent'').


Other languages


Latin script

All modern
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
make the hard/soft distinction with , except a few that have undergone spelling reforms such as Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) or
Haitian Creole Haitian Creole (; ht, kreyòl ayisyen, links=no, ; french: créole haïtien, links=no, ), commonly referred to as simply ''Creole'', or ''Kreyòl'' in the Creole language, is a French-based creole language spoken by 10–12million people wor ...
and archaic variants like Sardinian. The hard is in almost all those languages (with the exception of Galician, which may instead be a voiceless pharyngeal fricative), though the soft pronunciation, which occurs before , differs amongst them as follows: * in Italian and
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania ** Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
* in French and Portuguese * in
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
* or in Spanish, depending on the dialect Different languages use different strategies to indicate a hard pronunciation before front vowels: *
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
and
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania ** Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
writing systems use (e.g. Italian ''laghi'', Romanian ''ghid''), *
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
,
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
,
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, and
Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...
orthographies use a silent (e.g. French ''guerre'', Catalan ''guerra'', Spanish ''guitarra'', Portuguese ''guitarra''). With the exception of Portuguese, a
trema Trema may refer to: * a Greek and Latin root meaning ''hole'' * ''Tréma'', a word in French meaning diaeresis ** more generally, two dots (diacritic) * ''Trema'' (plant), a genus of about 15 species of small evergreen trees * Tréma (record la ...
over the is used to indicate that it is not silent (e.g. Spanish ''vergüenza'' is pronounced , with both a hard and non-mute ). **In Portuguese (especially Brazilian Portuguese) this was also used until the most recent
orthographic reform A spelling reform is a deliberate, often authoritatively sanctioned or mandated change to spelling rules. Proposals for such reform are fairly common, and over the years, many languages have undergone such reforms. Recent high-profile examples ar ...
(the new orthography now being compulsory in Brazil after a 2009-2016 transition period). The new orthography maintains the for a hard g, but there is no marking of whether the is silent; the reader must already know the pronunciation of words with a (or ) digraph (previous: ''guitarra'' vs ''pingüim,'' current: ''guitarra'' and ''pinguim''). A soft pronunciation before non-front vowels is usually indicated by a silent or (e.g. Italian ''giorno'', French ''mangeons''), though
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, Portuguese,
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
and
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
use as in ''jueves''. Several
North Germanic languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also ...
also make a hard/soft distinction. Again, the hard is in most of these languages, but the soft differs as follows: * in
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
before * in
Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...
before * in Faroese before , but not before
Icelandic orthography Icelandic orthography is the way in which Icelandic words are spelled and how their spelling corresponds with their pronunciation. Alphabet The Icelandic alphabet is a Latin-script alphabet including some letters duplicated with acute accents ...
is a bit more complicated by having lenited pronunciations of . In German, the g is mostly a hard g, also before ''e'' and ''i'': ''geben'' (to give), ''Geld'' (money), ''Gier'' (greed), ''Gift'' (poison, venom). Soft g occurs in loanwords, usually preserving the original pronunciation. So in words of French origin like ''Orange'' (orange), ''logieren'' (to lodge) or ''Etage'' (floor), the ''g'' is pronounced as ; words taken from English like ''Gin'' or ''Gender'' use the -sound. However others, such as ''agieren'' (act, agitate), ''Generation'' (generation) or ''Gymnasium'' (academic high school), are pronounced with a hard g. Some pronunciations vary by region: The word ''Giraffe'' is pronounced with a soft G in Austria, but with a hard G in Germany. The ''g'' in ''Magnet'' is pronounced as a hard g, but the ''gn'' in ''Champagner'' is pronounced like the French ''gn'' in ''champagne''. The letter combination ''ng'' is usually merged to a
velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...
, and the g is not spoken in its own right; e.g., in the German word ''Finger'', it is not audible as in the English word ''finger''. However, when those letters are pronounced separately, as in compound words like ''Eingabe'' (input) or also in verbs like ''fingieren'' (to feign), both the ''n'' and the hard ''g'' is clearly audible. There are exceptions in loanwords like French-derived ''rangieren'' (to rank, to shunt), spoken with a velar nasal and a soft ''g'' (). Other languages typically have hard pronunciations except possibly in loanwords where it may represent or . The orthography of
Luganda The Ganda language or Luganda (, , ) is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 10 million Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda includin ...
is similar to Italian in having a soft pronunciation before front vowels (namely ) and indicates this soft pronunciation. Because
Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communic ...
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
is
phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
, always represents a hard g; a soft g is represented by the accented letter The
Vietnamese alphabet The Vietnamese alphabet ( vi, chữ Quốc ngữ, lit=script of the National language) is the modern Latin writing script or writing system for Vietnamese. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages originally developed by Portuguese m ...
does not have a hard or a soft per se. However, since it was inherited from European Romance languages (Portuguese and Italian) except the diacritics which were from Greek; the letter never occurs in "soft positions", i.e. before , and where the digraph (colloquially known as ''gờ ghép'' "composed ") is used instead. Likewise, the trigraph (''ngờ ghép'' "composed ") also replaces the digraph in those positions. "gh" can be explained as following Italian convention, and "ngh" as a form of analogy. However, there still is which is considered a digraph on its own, even in the word ''gì''.


Other scripts

In
Modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
, which uses the
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...
, the Greek letter ''
gamma Gamma (uppercase , lowercase ; ''gámma'') is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop . In Modern Greek, this letter r ...
'' (
uppercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
: ;
lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
: ) – which is ancestral to the Roman letters and – has "soft-type" and "hard-type" pronunciations, though Greek speakers do not use such a terminology. The "soft" pronunciation (that is, the
voiced palatal fricative The voiced palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that represents this sound is (crossed-tail j), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j\. It is t ...
) occurs before and (both which represent ), and before , , , , and (which all represent ). In other instances, the "hard" pronunciation (that is, the
voiced velar fricative The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in Modern English but existed in Old English. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , ...
) occurs. In the
Russian alphabet The Russian alphabet (russian: ру́сский алфави́т, russkiy alfavit, , label=none, or russian: ру́сская а́збука, russkaya azbuka, label=none, more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. I ...
(a variant of
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
), represents both hard (твёрдый ) and soft (мягкий ) pronunciations, and , respectively. The soft pronunciation of occurs before any of the "softening" vowels and the hard pronunciation occurs elsewhere. However, the letter functions as a "soft g" in the Romance sense, with alterations between and common in the language (e.g. ложить, "to lie (down)", past tense лёг; подруга, "girlfriend", diminutive подружка). In other Slavic languages, there are similar phenomena involving (or ) and (or ). In Modern
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, which uses the
Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewi ...
, the letter ''
gimel Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml , Hebrew Gimel , Aramaic Gāmal , Syriac Gāmal , and Arabic (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order). Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all ...
'' () typically has the sound within Hebrew words, although in some
Sephardic Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), pt, Judeus sefa ...
dialects, it represents or when written with a
dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of modi ...
(i.e., a dot placed inside the letter: ), and when without a dagesh. An apostrophe-like symbol called a
Geresh Geresh ( in Hebrew: ‎ or ‎ , or medieval ) is a sign in Hebrew writing. It has two meanings. #An apostrophe-like sign (also known colloquially as a ''chupchik'') placed after a letter: #* as a diacritic that modifies the pronunciation ...
can be added immediately to the left of a gimel (i.e., ) to indicate that the gimel represents an affricate ).


See also

*
English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, ...
* G *
Hard and soft C In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft occurs in which represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard often precedes the non-front vowels , and , and is that ...
* Hard and soft G in Dutch * Pronunciation of ''GIF''


Notes


References

* * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:G - Hard And Soft Consonants Spelling English orthography