Ge (Cyrillic)

In standard Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Bulgarian and Macedonian the letter Ghe represents a voiced velar plosive /ɡ/ but is devoiced to [k] word-finally or before a voiceless consonant.

In standard Russian, Ghe represents the voiced velar plosive /ɡ/ but is devoiced to [k] word-finally or before a voiceless consonant. It represents /ɡʲ/ before a palatalizing vowel. In the Southern Russian dialect, the sound becomes the velar fricative /ɣ/. Sometimes, the sound is the glottal fricative /ɦ/ in the regions bordering Belarus and Ukraine.

It is acceptable, for some people, to pronounce certain Russian words with [ɣ] (sometimes referred to as Ukrainian Ge): Бог, богатый, благо, Господь (Bog, bogatyj, blago, Gospod’). The sound is normally considered nonstandard or dialectal in Russian and is avoided by educated Russian speakers. Бог (Bog, "God") is always pronounced [box] in the nominative case.[1]

In the Russian nominal genitive ending -ого, -его, Ghe represents [v], including in the word сегодня ("today", from сего дня).

It represents a voiceless [x] (not [k]) in front of Ka in two Russian words, namely, мягкий and лёгкий, and their derivatives.

The Latin letter H of words of Latin, Greek, English or German origin is usually transliterated into Russian with Ghe rather than Kha: hero → герой, hamburger → гамбургер, Haydn → Гайдн. That can occasionally cause ambiguity, as for example English Harry and Gary/Garry would be spelled the same in Russian, eg. Гарри Поттер). The reasons for using Ghe to write h include the fact that Ghe is used for h in Ukrainian, Belarusian and some Russian dialects, along with the perception that Kha sounds too harsh. Nevertheless, in newer loanwords (especially from English), Kha is often used.

In Ukrainian and Rusyn, it represents a voiced glottal fricative [ɦ],[1] a breathy voiced counterpart of the English [h].

In Belarusian (like in Southern Russian), the letter corresponds to the velar fricative /ɣ/[1] and its soft counterpart /ɣʲ/.

In both languages, the letter is called He and transliterated with H rather than with G.

In Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian, a voiced velar plosive /ɡ/ is written with the Cyrillic letter Ghe with upturn (Ґ ґ) in Ukrainian (transliterated with G) and with the digraph кг in Belarusian (also ґ in Taraškievica).