G

G, seventh letter in the English and other alphabets derived from the Latin. The uppercase, or capital G is derived from the Latin C, which in turn is from the Greek G, gamma, rounded in the 7th century bc. Latin c represented the sounds of both g and k until the 3rd century bc, when the character was modified to make a distinction of the g sound. Once established, the new letter took the place in the alphabet of the Greek Z, zeta, which was not used in Latin. The modern lowercase g developed from a form that appeared in the 7th century. In English, g can represent a palatal stop before all vowels and can also be an alveolar fricative before the vowels e (as in general) and i (as in giraffe). (See also Phonetics.)