We speak the language and pronounce new words based on the past words of the language. There are exceptions but they don’t negate the defaults.
Nearly every single word in English that starts with a g followed by a soft ih/eh vowel is pronounced as a soft g, just a few:
gin gypsy general gerund Gerald gel gem gyp Geronimo gesture
In fact, there are something like 20,000 words in the dictionary that start with G and the number of them that are pronounced with a hard G where this rule otherwise dictates a soft G is such a small fraction of them that it has its own wiki page.
This video is a tad harsh for comedic effort, but otherwise entirely fact based and sourced:
Bottom line: you’re free to use a hard G, but it’s not the default pronunciation based on either all other English words or the creator’s intentions, and if you’re confused why others pronounce it with a soft G, they would seem to be simply more familiar with the English language 🤷♂️
Nearly every single word in English that starts with a g followed by a soft ih/eh vowel is pronounced as a soft g, just a few:
That is patently not true and blatant cherry picking, e.g. already contradicted by the lexically matching word “gift” (and there are “giggle”, “gild”, “girl”, “git”, “give”, “gizmo”, etc.). See Wikipedia, which referenced linguists studying this:
An analysis of 269 words by linguist Michael Dow found near-tied results on whether a hard or soft g was more appropriate based on other English words; the results varied somewhat depending on what parameters were used.[11] Of the 105 words that contained gi somewhere in the word, 68 used the soft g while only 37 employed its counterpart. However, the hard g words were found to be significantly more common in everyday English; […]
All you basically said is “nuh uh because my feelings” and then an appeal to authority who disregarded the following vowel sound. “But he’s a professor” proves nothing, let alone backs any sort of assertion that you or he are familiar with squat 🤷♂️
Letters are pronounced differently in acronyms than in the original words all the time. Take POTUS, for example; the O and U are not the sounds in “of” or “United”.
Looks like the Jif crowds downvote bombing, yikes.
So I’m upvoting everyone, let’s try and keep this civil and downvotes out of this! Both sides are technically correct, correcting each other is divisive and playing into trolling.
lol no they aren’t both correct. The creator of the format decides and did decide, it’s pronounced like a J just like the peanut butter they did a collaboration with because it’s pronounced just like that. There’s no debate, just trolling.
just because someone demonstrated intelligence and efficacy in a specific field does not make them an appropriate authority on other shit.
herman cain, for instance, was a very talented neurosurgeon but still such a fucking moron he literally got his own stupid ass killed through covid denialism.
this is also why we should still call it twitter no mattter what a dipshit like elon musk wants
people who have, on paper, a “right” to assign the name or title to something can be wrong, and this is one such case.
If you say so, Cathy. That’s your new name by the way, your parents were clearly wrong because reasons, and Cathy is easier to write so that’s you now.
Almost every person who was assigned the same legal name by their parents, I ended up hating their guts, but I’ve never met a Cathy I didn’t like.
If there becomes an etymological precedent, such as someone actually accurately guessing WHY Cathy would serve greater utility as my name than my legally assigned-at-birth one, I’ll introduce myself to people even outside this thread as Cathy, and furthermore explain why if they actually want to hear it.
As for this comment thread, hi y’all my name is Cathy. At least, to this person it is. I’ll recognize when they call me Cathy, though.
Honestly who cares at the end of the day, even if one is technically correct enough people pronounce it the “wrong” way that it’s like trying to unpop a baloon
I just want the “hard-g because graphical” crowd to really commit to the bit and start insisting that JPEG be pronounced “jay-feg” because of “photographic.”
No, Carl. Acronyms are not pronounced based on the origin words of the letters that make them up. That is a fake rule made up by people just so they could justify pronouncing “gif” wrong.
I’d rather be in the majority saying it wrong then the minority saying it right.
Because at the end of the day the way you pronounce words is a very social thing, and no matter what is technically right or wrong, it’s going to benefit you to say it in the way everyone else does.
I dont know why you believe thats how language works, its not. Everyone in Texas pronouncing “nuclear” “nukular” instead of “noo-clee-ar” doesn’t make it correct. It still comes from the root word “nucleus”, not “nukulus”. The majority are objectively wrong, and there are no arguments to be made to the contrary.
If you want to be wrong on purpose, go for it, just stop pretending otherwise. You’re embarrassing yourself and all English speakers.
Everyone in the comments pointing out inconsistencies in the English language, but there’s lots of people who speak other languages, that do very interesting things to such consonants.
Can we get some input from the likes of the Danish and the Dutch regarding how to read this?
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