Ġ Explained

Ġ (minuscule: ġ) is a letter of the Latin script, formed from G with the addition of a dot above the letter.

Usage

Arabic

Ġ is used in some Arabic transliteration schemes, such as DIN 31635 and ISO 233, to represent the letter Arabic: غ (ġain).In the Standard Tunisian Alphabet ^[1] Ġ is used in Tunisian Arabic to represent the voiced pharyngeal fricative pronounced as //ʕ//. Whereas it uses Ğ to represent the voiced uvular fricative pronounced as //ʁ//.

Armenian

Ġ is used in the romanization of Classical or Eastern Armenian to represent the letter Armenian: Ղ/ղ (ġat).

Chechen

Ġ is present in the Chechen Latin alphabet, created in the 1990s. The Cyrillic equivalent is гI, which represents the sound pronounced as //ɣ//.^[2]

Inupiat

Ġ is used in some dialects of Inupiat to represent the voiced uvular fricative pronounced as //ʁ//.

Irish

Ġ was formerly used in Irish to represent the lenited form of G. The digraph gh is now used.^[3]

Maltese

Ġ is the 7th letter of the Maltese alphabet, preceded by F and followed by G. It represents the voiced postalveolar affricate pronounced as /[dʒ]/.^[4]

Old Czech

(ġ) is sometimes (about 16th century) used to represent real [<nowiki/>[[Voiced velar plosive|g]]], to distinguish it from the letter ⟨g⟩, which represented the consonant [<nowiki/>[[Voiced palatal approximant|j]]].

Old English

(Ġ) is sometimes used in modern scholarly transcripts of Old English to represent pronounced as /[j]/ or pronounced as /[dʒ]/ (after (n)), to distinguish it from (g) pronounced as pronounced as //ɣ//, which is otherwise spelled identically. The digraph was also used to represent pronounced as /[dʒ]/.^[5]

Ukrainian

(Ġ) is used in some Ukrainian transliteration schemes, mainly ISO 9:1995, as the letter Ґ.

Phonetic transcription

(ġ) is sometimes used as a phonetic symbol transcribing pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/.

Georgian

Ġ is used in the transliteration of Georgian to represent the letter ღ.

Computer encoding

ISO 8859-3 (Latin-3) includes Ġ at D5 and ġ at F5 for use in Maltese, and ISO 8859-14 (Latin-8) includes Ġ at B2 and ġ at B3 for use in Irish.

Precomposed characters for Ġ and ġ have been present in Unicode since version 1.0. As part of WGL4, it can be expected to display correctly on most computer systems.

Appearance	Code points	Name
Ġ	U+0120 U+0047, U+0307	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER G WITH DOT ABOVE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER G + COMBINING DOT ABOVE
ġ	U+0121 U+0067, U+0307	LATIN SMALL LETTER G WITH DOT ABOVE LATIN SMALL LETTER G + COMBINING DOT ABOVE

OpenAI's GPT-2 uses U+0120 (Ġ) as a substitute for the space character in its tokens.^[6]

Notes and References

1. The Standard Tunisian Alphabet or Tunisian Alphabet (in Tunisian: l'Alphabet t'Tounsiy) is a phonemic Latin-based Alphabet used to write down Tunisian. It uses the 26 main letters alongside other additional latin letters. It isn't yet official to use and not famous amongst Tunisians, but is still a good way to use it writing Tunisian if considering Latin as the Alphabet.
2. Book: Koryakov . Yuri B. . Atlas of Caucasian Languages . 2002 . Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences . Moscow . 6–7 .
3. Web site: Symbol Codes | Irish, Old Irish and Manx . Pennsylvania State University . 21 April 2017 . 10 January 2023.
4. Robert D. Hoberman . Kaye . Alan S. . Chapter 13. Maltese Morphology . Morphologies of Asia and Africa . 2007 . Eisenbrauns . Winona Lake, Ind. . 978-1-57506-109-2 . 258 . 10 January 2023 .
5. Web site: Daniel Paul O'Donnell . The Pronunciation of Old English . University of Lethbridge Personal Web Sites . 26 October 2022.
6. Web site: Why \u0120 (Ġ) is in so many pairs? · Issue #80 · openai/GPT-2 . .