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Concept
Gamma
Summary
Gamma 'gæmə (uppercase , lowercase ; γάμμα gámma) is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop ɡ. In Modern Greek, this letter represents either a voiced velar fricative ɣ or a voiced palatal fricative ʝ (while /g/ in foreign words is instead commonly transcribed as γκ).
In the International Phonetic Alphabet and other modern Latin-alphabet based phonetic notations, it represents the voiced velar fricative.
The Greek letter Gamma Γ is a grapheme derived from the Phoenician letter (gīml) which was rotated from the right-to-left script of Canaanite to accommodate the Greek language's writing system of left-to-right. The Canaanite grapheme represented the /g/ phoneme in the Canaanite language, and as such is cognate with gimel ג of the Hebrew alphabet.
Based on its name, the letter has been interpreted as an abstract representation of a camel's neck, but this has been criticized as contrived, and it is more likely that the letter is derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph representing a club or throwing stick.
In Archaic Greece, the shape of gamma was closer to a classical lambda (Λ), while lambda retained the Phoenician L-shape ().
Letters that arose from the Greek gamma include Etruscan (Old Italic) 𐌂, Roman C and G, Runic kaunan , Gothic geuua , the Coptic Ⲅ, and the Cyrillic letters Г and Ґ.
The Ancient Greek /g/ phoneme was the voiced velar stop, continuing the reconstructed proto-Indo-European *g, *ǵ.
The modern Greek phoneme represented by gamma is realized either as a voiced palatal fricative (/ʝ/) before a front vowel (/e/, /i/), or as a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ in all other environments. Both in Ancient and in Modern Greek, before other velar consonants (κ, χ, ξ – that is, k, kh, ks), gamma represents a velar nasal /ŋ/. A double gamma γγ (e.g., άγγελος, "angel") represents the sequence /ŋɡ/ (phonetically varying [ŋɡ~ɡ]) or /ŋɣ/.
Lowercase Greek gamma is used in the Americanist phonetic notation and Uralic Phonetic Alphabet to indicate voiced consonants.
Official source
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