We just don’t think about it
much.
After all, it is not the first
or the last in the abcdery, is neither the loveliest nor most dramatic, and is
not the dullest or least appealing either. It is only the 16th most used letter in common writing. In other words...it is neither here nor
there. It just kind of sits there
in the 7th position, a graceful curve between the two angular forms of F and
H. Sturdy, noble, poised. Reliable.
But it is a grand letter too,
if only because we could not have the word grand without it. Not to mention great, or good, or even
generic. So let us take a moment
to praise the letter G.
If you google G, which you can
only do by using it, you get 3 billion hits and that must say something. Like most of its fellow letters, you
can follow the evolution of the G in a neat counter-clockwise arc (like the
letter G, come to think of it) around the Mediterranean. Starting in Egypt 5,000 years ago where
some scholars relate it to a hieroglyph that represented a boomerang. Then moving up to Ancient Phoenicia
where it began to look like a bent angle.
By 600 BCE the Greeks wrote it as a right-facing right angle and called
it gamma. It was the third
letter of their alphabet. The Romans
by the 2nd century gave the letter its current form as an arc with a
foot.
An alternative history says
that G really derives from Z, the first letter of the word zayin which
in Hebrew means “weapon” or “ornament.”
According to this tale, Z was the original 7th letter but was purged from the Latin alphabet in the 3rd
century BCE by the Roman censor Appius Claudius, who found it
distasteful and foreign.
History is fun but it is good
to remember that in alphabetics, form follows sound and writing is above all an attempt
to render speech into pictures. It
is here that G really comes into its own thanks to its versatility. G is a linguistic Leonardo. It can be hard like the G in gun,
goose, and game; softer like the G in ginger, giant, geology; or really soft
like the G in rouge, beige, and genre.
When it is followed by an H, it can sound like an ocean wave as in rough
or, on the other hand, be utterly silent as in high.
Like the other letters, we
also use G as a stand-in and here too it is both approachable and
flexible. G means good on a report
card but not great. G means
gravity in physics but not grandeur.
G refers to German in dictionaries but not germaine. Gulf in geography but not gorge. A gram of weight but not a pound of
cure. A grand but no fortune. A tone but not a sonata. A guinea but no gold. G as in government spending,
conductance, the fifth note of C Major.
You see what we mean?
Not majestic, just
reliable.
In lower case, with a playful
tail, G can get a bit wild and crazy graphically but it is still
suitable for all audiences, never risqué. Oh sure the alphabet needs its As and Zs, must mind
its Ps and Qs, and W is always there for fun.
But let us honor the letter G
for the moment...genuine, genteel, gracious, good-natured. Our writing needs all that too, doesn’t
it. Golly G, of course it does.
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