User:Deoxy99/appletestpage

The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family (Rosaceae) and is a perennial. It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans.

The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor is still found today. There are more than 7,500 known cultivars of apples, resulting in a range of desired characteristics. Cultivars vary in their yield and the ultimate size of the tree, even when grown on the same rootstock.

At least 55 million tons of apples were grown worldwide in 2005, with a value of about $10 billion. China produced about 35% of this total. The United States is the second-leading producer, with more than 7.5% of world production. Iran is third, followed by Turkey, Russia, Italy and India.

Usage of Apples
In English, the letter represents a voiced postalveolar affricate ("soft G"), as in: giant, ginger, and geology; or a voiced velar plosive  ("hard G"), as in: goose, gargoyle, and game. In some words of French origin, the "soft G" is pronounced as a fricative, as in rouge, beige, and genre. Generally, ‹g› is soft before ‹e›, ‹i›, and ‹y› in words of Romance origin, and hard otherwise; there are many English words of non-Romance origin where ‹g› is hard regardless of position (e.g. get), and three (gaol, margarine, algae) in which it is soft even before an ‹a›. Non-Romance languages typically use ‹g› to represent regardless of position. Amongst European languages Dutch is an exception as it does not have in its native words, and instead ‹g› represents a voiced velar fricative, a sound that does not occur in modern English. German, however, is notable for its sparse use of ‹g› to represent a pronunciation (to represent the sounds, or ) regardless of its position within German words.) While the soft value of ‹g› varies in different Romance languages ( in French and Portuguese, in Catalan,  in Italian and Romanian, and  in Castilian Spanish, and  in other dialects of Spanish), in all except Romanian and Italian, soft ‹g› has the same pronunciation as the ‹j›.  Several digraphs are common in English. ‹gh› which came about when the letter yogh was removed from the alphabet, and took various values including , , , and . It now has a great variety of values, including  in enough,  in loan words like spaghetti, and as an indicator of a letter's "long" pronunciation in words like eight and night. ‹Gn› with value is also common in loanwords, as in lasagna (though initially, as in gnome, the ‹g› is simply silent).

In Italian and Romanian, ‹gh› is used to represent before front vowels where ‹g› would otherwise represent a soft value. In Italian and French, ‹gn› is used to represent the palatal nasal, a sound somewhat similar to the ‹ny› in English canyon. In Italian, the trigraph ‹gli›, when appearing before a vowel, represents the palatal lateral approximant ; in the definite article and pronoun gli, the digraph ‹gl› represents the same sound.

In Maori (Te Reo Māori), ‹g› is used in the combination ‹ng› which represents the velar nasal and is pronounced like the ‹ng› in singer.