Hard and soft G
In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, the letter ⟨g⟩ is used in different contexts to represent two distinct phonemes that in English are called hard and soft ⟨g⟩.
A ⟨g⟩ at the end of a word usually renders a hard ⟨g⟩ (as in "rag"), while if a soft rendition is intended it would be followed by a silent ⟨e⟩ (as in "rage").
This alternation has its origins in a historical palatalization of /ɡ/ which took place in Late Latin, and led to a change in the pronunciation of the sound [ɡ] before the front vowels [e] and [i].
The soft pronunciation of algae, the only one heard in North America, is sometimes cited as an exception, but it is actually conformant, ⟨ae⟩ being an alternate digraph spelling for a vowel in the ⟨e i y⟩ family.
This leads to special issues regarding the coherence of orthography when suffixes are added to words that end in a hard-⟨g⟩ sound.
When suffixes are added to words ending with a hard or soft ⟨g⟩ (such as -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -ism, -ist, -edness, -ish(ness), -ily, -iness, -ier, -iest, -ingly, -edly, and -ishly), the sound is normally maintained.
Sometimes the normal rules of spelling changes before suffixes can help signal whether the hard or soft sound is intended.
The digraph ⟨gu⟩ is sometimes used to indicate a hard ⟨g⟩ pronunciation before ⟨i e y⟩ (e.g. guess, guitar, Guinness), including cases where ⟨e⟩ is silent (e.g., rogue, intrigue, catalogue, analogue).
All modern Romance languages make the hard/soft distinction with ⟨g⟩,[1] except a few that have undergone spelling reforms such as Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) or Haitian Creole and archaic variants like Sardinian.
Again, the hard ⟨g⟩ is [ɡ] in most of these languages, but the soft ⟨g⟩ differs as follows: Icelandic orthography is a bit more complicated by having lenited pronunciations of ⟨g⟩.
[citation needed] In German, the g is mostly a hard g, also before e and i: geben (to give), Geld (money), Gier (greed), Gift (poison, venom).
However, when those letters are pronounced separately, as in compound words like Eingabe (input) or also in verbs like fingieren (to feign), both the n and the hard g is clearly audible.
There are exceptions in loanwords like French-derived rangieren (to rank, to shunt), spoken with a velar nasal and a soft g ([ʒ]).
However, since it was inherited from European Romance languages (Portuguese and Italian) except the diacritics which were from Greek; the letter ⟨g⟩ never occurs in "soft positions", i.e. before ⟨e⟩, ⟨ê⟩ and ⟨i⟩ where the digraph ⟨gh⟩ (colloquially known as gờ ghép "composed ⟨g⟩") is used instead.
In the Russian alphabet (a variant of Cyrillic), ⟨г⟩ represents both hard (твёрдый [ˈtvʲordɨj]) and soft (мягкий [ˈmʲæxʲkʲɪj]) pronunciations, [ɡ] and [ɡʲ], respectively.
However, the letter ⟨ж⟩ functions as a "soft g" in the Romance sense, with alterations between ⟨г⟩ and ⟨ж⟩ common in the language (e.g. ложиться, "to lie (down)", past tense лёг; подруга, "girlfriend", diminutive подружка).
