Gha

The letter Ƣ (minuscule: ƣ) has been used in various Latin orthographies for Turkic languages, such as Azeri or the Jaŋalif orthography for Tatar.^[1] It usually represents a voiced velar fricative, but is sometimes used for a voiced uvular fricative. All orthographies using it have been phased out, so the letter is not well-supported in fonts. It can still be seen on pre-1983 banknotes issued by the People’s Republic of China.

Historically, it is derived from a hand-written form of the small Latin letter q, circa 1900. The majuscule is then based on the minuscule. Its use for [ɣ] stems from the linguistic tradition of representing such sounds (and similars) by q in Turkic languages and in transcriptions of Arabic or Persian (c.f. kaf vs. qof).^[2]

In alphabetical order, it comes between G and H.

Unrelated letters transcribed gha, typically representing a voiced aspirated stop rather than a fricative, occur in scripts descended from Brāhmī script.

Modern Replacements

• Azeri: Ğ, ğ
• Tatar: Г, г (Cyrillic), Ğ, ğ (Latin)
• Bashkir: Ғ,ғ
• Uyghur: غ (Arabic), Ғ, ғ (Cyrillic), GH gh (Latin)
• Yakut: Ҕ, ҕ
• Uzbek: Gʻ gʻ

Unicode

In Unicode, the majuscule Ƣ is encoded in the Latin Extended-B block at U+01A2 and the minuscule ƣ is encoded at U+01A3.^[3] It has been misnamed by ISO as “LATIN LETTER OI”.^[4]

References