The seventh letter of the Latin and English alphabets, derived from the North Semitic letter ghimel and the Greek gamma, also the sources for the letter "C" (see C, c). In the Etruscan language, there was no distinction made between a "G" sound and a "K" sound, consequently the hard "C" and the "G" were used interchangeably. In Latin, when this distinction needed to be made, the small stroke was added to the lower portion of the "C." The lowercase "g" was a scribal variation of the capital, coming down in its present form from the Carolingian script.
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