Gamma (uppercase, lowercase ; ) 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. In Modern Greek, this letter normally represents a voiced velar fricative, except before either of the two front vowels (/e/, /i/), where it represents a voiced palatal fricative ; 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.

History

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.

Greek phoneme

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 before a front vowel (/e/, /i/), or as a voiced velar fricative 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. A double gamma γγ (e.g., άγγελος, "angel") represents the sequence (phonetically varying ) or.

Phonetic transcription

Lowercase Greek gamma is used in the Americanist phonetic notation and Uralic Phonetic Alphabet to indicate voiced consonants. The gamma was also added to the Latin alphabet, as Latin gamma, in the following forms: majuscule Ɣ, minuscule ɣ, and superscript modifier letter ˠ. In the International Phonetic Alphabet the minuscule letter is used to represent a voiced velar fricative and the superscript modifier letter is used to represent velarization. It is not to be confused with the character, which looks like a lowercase Latin gamma that lies above the baseline rather than crossing, and which represents the close-mid back unrounded vowel. In certain nonstandard variations of the IPA, the uppercase form is used. It is as a full-fledged majuscule and minuscule letter in the alphabets of some of languages of Africa such as Dagbani, Dinka, Kabye, and Ewe, and Berber languages using the Berber Latin alphabet. It is sometimes also used in the romanization of Pashto.

Mathematics and science

Lowercase

The lowercase letter \gamma is used as a symbol for: Cp/Cv in thermodynamics The lowercase Latin gamma ɣ can also be used in contexts (such as chemical or molecule nomenclature) where gamma must not be confused with the letter y, which can occur in some computer typefaces.

Uppercase

The uppercase letter \Gamma is used as a symbol for:

Unicode

These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style: