THE LETTER G OF THE ALPHABET. The history of this letter began with the Latin alphabet. The Chalcidic alphabet, from which the Latin derived, represented the voiced velar stop by its third letter gamma / C. This passed into Latin and was used, in its rounded form. C, to represent the same sound in early times, e.g., in the word R E C E I , occurring in an early Latin inscription. The letter however came to represent the unvoiced velar stop, thus ousting K. This was probably due to Etruscan influence. To avoid confusion a new letter G was differentiated from C and used to represent the voiced velar, while C henceforward stood for the unvoiced velar only. The new letter was placed in the alphabet in the place of Greek Z (zeta) which was not required in the Latin alphabet. The uncial form of the letter in the 6th and 7th centuries was or , . The form with rounded head L, from which our minuscule g is derived, appears first in Latin cursive writing about the beginning of the 7th century taking the place of such earlier forms as . It was standardised in Carolingian as J The minuscule flat-headed form was adopted by Irish writing of the 6th and 7th centuries, e.g., 3 or 3. Such a form had been in use in Latin cursive, e.g., (5thcent.), (late 7th cent.), (7th or 8th cent.). A form in Merovin gian (pre-Carolingian French) writing in the 8th century, and a descendant of this was adopted into the Carolingian hand, not being entirely ousted by the round-headed form till the I i th century. The flat-headed form was adopted by the Early Eng lish hand from the Irish, and remained the only form of the letter in use in England until the introduction of Carolingian writing by the Norman scribes in the 12th century. Meanwhile certain changes had taken place in the sound represented by the letter. The voiced velar had become palatalised before the front vowels e and i. Thus the flat-headed form of the letter, the only form in use in pre-Norman England, represented the velar before back vowels, the palatal (a sound akin to that heard in German Tag, Zug) before front vowels. It also stood for the sound now rep resented by y initially before front vowels. In Middle English the palatal stop developed into the sound now represented by j, a similar change having taken place in the development of the Latin velar on the continent. This sound was therefore intro duced to English ears by the Normans, and in the Middle Eng lish period we find the two forms of the minuscule letter in use to represent different sounds. J represented the voiced velar (modern "hard" g) and the sound of j, represented the palatal stop (7) and the sound of y. As the palatal stop (in such words as might, high, enough, etc.) disappeared from the language, the use of the flat-headed form was discontinued. It survived in re mote parts, and by its similarity to the form of z produced con fusion with the latter.
In modern English the letter represents two sounds : i) the voiced velar; ii) the sound of j (di) before the vowels e, i, and y in words of Romance origin, e.g. gesture, ginger, gymnastics (con trast give, gilt). (B. F. C. A.) In music, G is the name of the seventh note of the musical alphabet or otherwise the fifth note of the scale of C. It gives its name also to the treble (or violin) clef, the distinguishing sign of which is placed upon the line representing this note in the treble stave. To which it may be added that the said sign itself was originally nothing but a capital G which in the course of time has come to assume the conventionalized form which we now have.
