Writing and Printing

Gha

The letter Ƣ (minuscule: ƣ), called gha, was used in the Latin orthographies of various, mostly Turkic languages, as part of the early Soviet Jaꞑalif orthographies. It was also later included in the Chinese pinyin-based alphabets for Kazakh and Uyghur until 1983. It usually represents a voiced velar fricative [ɣ] but is sometimes used for a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]. Except for the Uyghur New Script, which still sees limited use, all orthographies that used the letter have been phased out. Historically, it is derived from a handwritten form of the small Latin letter ⟨q⟩ around 1900. The majuscule is then based on the minuscule. Its use for [ɣ] stems from the linguistic tradition of representing such sounds (and similar ones) by q in Turkic languages and in transcriptions of Arabic or Persian (compare kaf and qaf). In alphabetical order, it comes between G and H.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Languages of China
• ▸Exploration geophysics
• ▸History of the Ottoman Empire

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.