Ga (Indic)


Ga is the third consonant of Indic abugidas. In modern Indic scripts, ga is derived from the early "Ashoka" Brahmi letter, which is probably derived from the Aramaic after having gone through the Gupta letter.

Āryabhaṭa numeration

used Devanagari letters for numbers, very similar to the Greek numerals, even after the invention of Indian numerals. The values of the different forms of ग are:
There are three different general early historic scripts - Brahmi and its variants, Kharoshthi, and Tocharian, the so-called slanting Brahmi. Ga as found in standard Brahmi, was a simple geometric shape, with slight variations toward the Gupta. The Tocharian Ga did not have an alterante Fremdzeichen form. The third form of ga, in Kharoshthi was probably derived from Aramaic separately from the Brahmi letter.

Brahmi Ga

The Brahmi letter, Ga, is probably derived from the Aramaic Gimel, and is thus related to the modern Latin G and C, and the Greek Gamma. Several identifiable styles of writing the Brahmi Ga can be found, most associated with a specific set of inscriptions from an artifact or diverse records from an historic period. As the earliest and most geometric style of Brahmi, the letters found on the Edicts of Ashoka and other records from around that time are normally the reference form for Brahmi letters, with vowel marks not attested until later forms of Brahmi back-formed to match the geometric writing style.
Ashoka
Girnar
Kushana
Gujarat
Gupta

Tocharian Ga

The Tocharian letter is derived from the Brahmi, but does not have an alternate Fremdzeichen form.
GaGāGiGīGuGūGrGr̄GeGaiGoGauGä

Kharoshthi Ga

The Kharoshthi letter is generally accepted as being derived from the Aramaic Gimel, and is thus related to G and C, and Gamma, in addition to the Brahmi Ga.

Devanagari script

Ga is the third consonant of the Devanagari abugida. It ultimately arose from the Brahmi letter, after having gone through the Gupta letter. Letters that derive from it are the Gujarati letter ગ and the Modi letter ?.

Devanagari Gga

Gga is the character ग with an underbar to represent the voiced velar implosive that occurs in Sindhi. This underbar is distinct from the Devanagari stress sign anudātta. The underbar is fused to the stem of the letter while the anudātta is a stress accent applied to the entire syllable. This underbar used for Sindhi implosives does not exist as a separate character in Unicode. When the ु or ू vowel sign is applied to jja, the ु and ू vowel signs are drawn beneath jja. When the उ vowel sign or ऊ vowel sign is applied to ja with an anudātta, the उ vowel sign or ऊ vowel sign is first placed under ja and then the anudātta is placed underneath the उ vowel sign or ऊ vowel sign.
Character Nameउ vowel signऊ vowel sign
ॻ ॻुॻू
ग॒ ग॒ुग॒ू

An example of a Sindhi word that uses gga is ॻुड़ु, which is of the masculine grammatical gender and means jaggery.

Devanagari Ġa

Ġa is the character ग with a single dot underneath. It is used in Devanagari transcriptions of Urdu and other languages to denote the voiced velar fricative.

Devanagari-using Languages

In all languages, ग is pronounced as or when appropriate. Like all Indic scripts, Devanagari uses vowel marks attached to the base consonant to override the inherent /ə/ vowel:
GaGāGiGīGuGūGrGr̄GlGl̄GeGaiGoGauG
गगागिगीगुगूगृगॄगॢगॣगेगैगोगौग्

Conjuncts with ग

Devanagari exhibits conjunct ligatures, as is common in Indic scripts. In modern Devanagari texts, most conjuncts are formed by reducing the letter shape to fit tightly to the following letter, usually by dropping a character's vertical stem, sometimes referred to as a "half form". Some conjunct clusters are always represented by a true ligature, instead of a shape that can be broken into constituent independent letters. Vertically stacked conjuncts are ubiquitous in older texts, while only a few are still used routinely in modern Devanagari texts. The use of ligatures and vertical conjuncts may vary across languages using the Devanagari script, with Marathi in particular preferring the use of half forms where texts in other languages would show ligatures and vertical stacks.

Ligature conjuncts of ग

True ligatures are quite rare in Indic scripts. The most common ligated conjuncts in Devanagari are in the form of a slight mutation to fit in context or as a consistent variant form appended to the adjacent characters. Those variants include Na and the Repha and Rakar forms of Ra. Nepali and Marathi texts use the "eyelash" Ra half form for an initial "R" instead of repha.

Stacked conjuncts of ग

Vertically stacked ligatures are the most common conjunct forms found in Devanagari text. Although the constituent characters may need to be stretched and moved slightly in order to stack neatly, stacked conjuncts can be broken down into recognizable base letters, or a letter and an otherwise standard ligature.

Bengali script

The Bengali script গ is derived from the Siddhaṃ, and is marked by the lack of horizontal head line, and less geometric shape than its Devanagari counterpart, ग. The inherent vowel of Bengali consonant letters is /ɔ/, so the bare letter গ will sometimes be transliterated as "go" instead of "ga". Adding okar, the "o" vowel mark, gives a reading of /go/.
Like all Indic consonants, গ can be modified by marks to indicate another vowel than its inherent "a".
gagāgigīgugūgrgr̄gegaigogaug
গগাগিগীগুগূগৃগৄগেগৈগোগৌগ্

গ in Bengali-using languages

গ is used as a basic consonant character in all of the major Bengali script orthographies, including Bengali and Assamese.

Conjuncts with গ

Bengali গ exhibits conjunct ligatures, as is common in Indic scripts, with a tendency towards stacked ligatures.

Gurmukhi script

Gagaa is the eighth letter of the Gurmukhi alphabet. Its name is and is pronounced as /g/ when used in words. It is derived from the Laṇḍā letter ga, and ultimately from the Brahmi ga. Gurmukhi gagaa does not have a special pairin or addha form for making conjuncts, and in modern Punjabi texts do not take a half form or halant to indicate the bare consonant /g/, although Gurmukhi Sanskrit texts may use an explicit halant.

Gujarati script

Ga is the third consonant of the Gujarati script. It is derived from 16th century Devanagari letter ga with the top bar removed. Like most Gujarati letters, it forms conjunct clusters with a half-form, where the vertical stem on the right is dropped and the remaining letter body appended to the following letter.

Thai script

Kho khwai and kho khon are the fourth and fifth letters of the Thai script. They fall under the low class of Thai consonants. In IPA, kho khwai and kho khon are pronounced as at the beginning of a syllable and are pronounced as at the end of a syllable. The previous two letters of the alphabet, kho khai and kho khuat , are also named kho, however, they all fall under the high class of Thai consonants. The next letter of the alphabet, kho ra-khang, correspond to the Sanskrit letter ‘घ’. Unlike many Indic scripts, Thai consonants do not form conjunct ligatures, and use the pinthu—an explicit virama with a dot shape—to indicate bare consonants.

Kho Khwai

In the acrophony of the Thai script, khwai means ‘water buffalo’. Kho khwai corresponds to the Sanskrit character ‘ग’.

Kho Khon

In the acrophony of the Thai script, khon means ‘person’. Kho khon represents the voiced velar fricative sound /ɣ/ that existed in Old Thai at the time the alphabet was created but no longer exists in Modern Thai. When the Thai script was developed, the voiceless velar fricative sound did not have a Sanskrit or Pali counterpart so the character kho khwai was slightly modied to create kho khon. During the Old Thai period, this sounds merged into the stop /ɡ/, and as a result the use of this letters became unstable. Although kho khon is now obsolete, it remains in dictionaries, preserving the traditional count of 44 letters in the Thai alphabet. When the first Thai typewriter was developed by Edwin Hunter McFarland in 1892, there was simply no space for all characters, thus kho khon was one of the two letters left out along with kho khuat. Although kho khuat does not appear in modern Thai orthography, some writers and publishers are trying to reintroduce its usage.