G
G is the seventh letter in the Roman alphabet.
History
The letter G was created by the Romans because they felt that C was not an adequate letter to represent both /k/ and /g/.
 Classical Greek |
 Early Latin |
Fascinatingly, the alleged inventor is a known historical figure, Spurius Carvilius Ruga (who flourished around 230 BC). G, which at this time took the place in the alphabet formerly held by Z, came to represent the sound /g/. As the sound /k/ did, /g/ also developed palatal and velar allophones which is why today, G has different sound values in all Romance languages, as well as English (due to French influence).
Usage
In English, the letter can be pronounced as a "soft G" (SAMPA: [dZ]), as in: giant, ginger, geology, or it can be pronounced as a "hard G" (SAMPA: [g]), as in: goose, gargoyle, game. In some words of French origin, as in French generally, the "soft G" is pronounced as SAMPA [Z], as in rouge, beige, and genre.
In Spanish, -ge- and -gi- are pronounced as -je- and -ji-. The Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez proposed to simplify the Spanish spelling by using just the versions with j. Thus, while the rest of Spanish speakers didn't follow him, his works and the translations of Rabindranath Tagore made by Jiménez's wife Zenobia Camprubí are published in his spelling.
Alternate representations
Golf represents the letter G in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
In international Morse code the letter G is DahDahDit: - - ·
In Braille the letter G is represented as ⠛ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,
XX XX ..
Computing
In Unicode the capital G is codepoint U+0047 and the lowercase g is U+0067.
The ASCII code for capital G is 71 and for lowercase g is 103; or in binary 01000111 and 01100111, correspondingly.
The EBCDIC code for capital G is 199 and for lowercase g is 135.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "G" and "g" for upper and lower case respectively.
Meanings for G
- In biochemistry,
- In the RGB color model, G stands for the color green.
- In computer games,
- G is a character in Sega's House of the Dead series of arcade games,
- G is the name of a currency in some computer role-playing games,
- 'G' is the class of gnomes and 'g' is a gremlin in the Roguelike game Nethack.
- In computing, G is a binary prefix for giga, meaning 230 = 1,073,741,824 (cf. G as an SI prefix in the Metric system, given below)
- In electrical engineering, G is often used as the name of the variable for conductance.
- In English slang, g is short for "gangsta" or gangster.
- In film,
- G is a rating given given by the Motion Picture Association of America, meaning the film is suitable for all ("general" audiences).
- G is also the name of a British film from 1974; see G (film).
- In financial securities, G is the stock symbol for The Gillette Company
- In international licence plate codes, G stands for Gabon.
- In the Metric system,
- In music, G is a note.
- In physics,
- G is the gravitational constant.
- g (always in lowercase) is the unit of acceleration due to gravity on Earth.
- G (the gauss) is the cgs unit of magnetic induction
- In radiocommunication, G is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to the United Kingdom.
- In psychometrics, g (always in lowercase) is the symbol for general intelligence.
- In sexology, the G spot is a part of the vagina that allegedly causes an orgasm when stimulated.
See also
Two-letter combinations starting with G: