Talk:Hard and soft G/Archive 1

Archive 1

Redundant material

The material added recently about "For English verbs and adjectives whose root word ends in hard g" etc is not relevant, because it reats words of Germanic roots where the g is hard anyway. There is no difference between a hard g in "bagged" and one in "give". "Changing" has a soft "g" because it is a word of romanic root. As for loan words from Italian etc., it follow the rules for Italian that are explained in the '"Other languages" section. The whole section has to be rewritten and shortened. As for the /f/ and /ŋ/ pronunciations, this has nothing to do with hard or soft and therefore does not belong in this article. Please discuss here before proceed to deleting this material.  Andreas  ^(T) 18:37, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The added material has no sources and therefore can be regarded as Wikipedia:original research and therefore does not belong in Wikipedia.  Andreas  ^(T) 18:43, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Andreas, for your valuable comments. Let me please individually address the various points you make.

1) You are indeed correct that there is no difference between the hard "g" sound found in "bagged" and the one found in "give". The reason that I thought it valuable to add material which describes how the addition of suffixes such as "-ed", "-ing", and "-est" retain the hard-g sound (and don't add any soft-"g" sound) to root words is due to analogous situations in English which yield analogously different results — and, thus, would be valuable to point out this hard-g retention rule to one studying English phonology or for one learning English as a second language. Let me cite this analogous example in regards to hard/soft "c": The word "electric", for example, ends with a hard "c". However, add the suffix "-ity" to make the word "electricity", and that hard "c" changes to a soft "c". Or, as another example, to create the past tense of "panic", we add a "k" to the "-ed" suffix to make "panicked". Now, you're correct that English is pretty consistent about how "c" has a soft sound anytime it's before "e", "i", or "y". However, given the difficult phonology of English and its many rules and exceptions to those rules, and given that we occasionally put a "k" after "c" to keep it hard, a student of English phonology would benefit, I feel, from a further "fleshing out" of how words ending in hard "g" just double the "g" in most cases (except for "ng"-ending words) and retain the hard-"g" sound. This especially may not be clear to non-native speakers of English unless it is "laid on the table" for them.

2) In a similar spirit, I also addressed how root words ending in "ge" (such as "change") keep the soft-"g" sound when suffixes such as "-ing" are added, despite the aforementioned "Romance rule" alluding to this. In a further similar spirit, I also discussed how phonology is affected when such suffixes are added to such words. Yet again, with all of English's rules and exceptions, I feel that such "laying all of this out on the table" will benefit those studying English phonology, and especially non-native speakers of English, to avoid any erroneous assumptions.

3) I do feel that discussing the "ng" digraph is important, because doing so helps to point out relevant detail on the pronunciation of "g" in English, including some things which go beyond simply whether a word with "ng" is Romance or Germanic in origin as a guide to the digraph's pronunciation. (For example, "finger" has a /ŋg/ sound in the middle, but "singer" has a /ŋ/ [but no /g/ sound along with it] in the middle.) And, deviations such as "g" in concert with "h" (that is, "gh") taking on an /f/ sound or no sound at all is, I feel, relevant to seeing/understanding that "g" can have pronunciations which don't match the typical hard/soft dichotomy in English for "g".

4) Without trying to be overly pedantic, I also discussed a few very notable exceptions (such as how the final root-word "e" is retained in "singeing"), and also tried to state any rules in a way that I don't overgeneralize things. Getting back to words ending in "g", it is conceivable that a word could end in a soft "g" (such as if one were to use "rog" as a verb as shorthand for "roger" [perhaps a lewd word in British English :) ]). The past tense is apt to be written as "roged", not "rogged", despite the "short o" in the root word. Again, I want to be not only not too pedanic, but not overgeneralizing, either, and to sufficiently point things out in where not doing so could lead to erroneous judg(e)ments.

5) I did indeed point out French loanword pronunciation in English, and pronunciation of loanwords derived from a few other languages, despite the existence of the "Other languages" section which discusses foreign-language pronunciations of hard and soft "g" — but I feel that doing so is highly relevant to showing how hard and soft "g" function in English. True, for example, the French-derived word "genre" would be pronounced with the same /ʒ/ sound in both French and English. However, it is atypical for words in English to have this sound (that is, as an alternative soft-"g" sound); again, the English section discusses English pronunciation as opposed to French pronunciation. And, the way that "g" is pronounced in loanwords is not totally parallel between the loanword languages and English. For example, the Greek-derived prefix "-(o)logy" consistenly contains a soft-"g" sound which is not found in Greek.

6) Finally, I do acknowledge that better sourcing of this article, as well as of the analogous article on Hard and soft c, would be good. However, at the time I'm writing this, it appears that nothing in either article has been sourced yet, including anything that you have added to either article. This is not written in a negative vein — what I'm simply acknowledging is that both of us have made contributions to these articles based upon what seem to be truths requiring little hard research. Again, I'm all for trying to well-source articles, and that can be a good step to take with the articles in question. However, I do feel that anything that presently exists in these articles, whether added by me or someone else, probably should be shown to be "clearly shaky" before deleting it. This by no means precludes changing/deleting things in this or any other articles — I certainly don't "own" any articles here. I just wanted to respectfully share my rationale for the additions I made, despite their unsourced nature at this time.

Thanks again, Andreas, for making the aforementioned comments. And, I did incorporate your thoughts into a modest revision I recently did of the article (e.g., how Germanic- and Romance-derived words tend to follow certain rules). I welcome any further concerns/comments you or others may have. —Respectfully, Catdude 23:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

dg

The section on dg doesn't seem useful to me. When dg is followed by e, the g is soft (budget, bridge, Padgett); when it is followed by a, it is hard (Edgar, endgame, goodgolly). The only real exception that's mentioned is the word judgment. Judgment is not part of a huge class of exceptions where the g is soft after a d, and in any case the others (abridgment, acknowledgment, fledgling, lodgment) are called out separately later, so I don't see any point in mentioning it at all.

Should this section be deleted?

Jonathanrcoxhead (talk) 19:42, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

List of English words where G is pronounced exceptionally

I have added a page with the above title that gives an explicit list of all the exceptions to the rule stated in paragraph 1 of "Hard and soft G". Is this a useful contribution to Wikipedia? I ask because an annoying fellow named Aeusoes1 thinks that it is not, and has started repeatedly removing it. He asked that I start a discussion here, and so here I am.

Thanks

Jonathanrcoxhead (talk) 21:24, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

There are several problems I see with List of English words where G is pronounced exceptionally.

1. It contradicts this article.
   1. As this article states, "word roots of Romance origin, the soft ‹g› pronunciation occurs before ‹i e y› while the hard ‹g› pronunciation occurs elsewhere; in words of non-Romance origin, ‹g› is typically hard." With this alone, you'd have to remove begin, give, girl, gear, geas, gecko, geek, geese, geigar, geisha, gelding, get, geyser, gibbon, giddy, gift, gig, giggle, gild, gill, Gimbel, gimmick, gird, girdle, girth, gynecology, target, tiger, together, forgive, yogi, exaggerate, suggest, their derivatives... you get the picture, right?
   2. It states that a <g> following <n> is normally hard or deleted. Not only does this article not state that, but it's simply not true and hard/soft status of g after <n> (or another <g>, by the way) comes about the same way as <g> without a preceding <n>. Instances of <nge> representing anything but /ndʒ/ are from suffixation with -ing, -ed, -er, or -est.
2. The title. Letters are not "pronounced" They represent pronunciations.
3. With what's removed, there are few enough "exceptions" (e.g. gewgaw, gibbous, Giza, gizmo, gizzard, renege, veggie, bungee, margarine, mortagor, and a handful of words that have alternate spellings that fit with the paradigm) that they can be accounted for in this article. Moreover, the nuances of the orthographic treatment of <g> are already dealt with here. Adding another page that just lists the words without any contextualization is less than redundant, it's pointless.

Jonathanrcoxhead and I have discussed this a bit on my talk page, though we don't seem to come to any agreement. So if other editors could weigh in on this, it would be helpful. There is also a parallel conversation at Talk:Hard and soft C. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:17, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I come via WP:3O. To me, it seems the list articles are inappropriate as they are rather dictionary-like and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. I think merging them into the existing articles is a good solution. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:50, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Late Latin or Vulgar Latin?

In the History section should the origin be Vulgar Latin instead of Late Latin? From the article for the latter,

Being a written language, Late Latin is not the same as Vulgar Latin. The latter served as ancestor of the Romance languages.

— Late Latin

Nikko2013 (talk) 20:56, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

The other way around

Anyone else think it makes more sense the other way around? --Jnelson09 22:43, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you, but this is the traditional designation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.225.30.91 (talk) 08:04, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Same here. 79.134.37.137 (talk) 03:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

fungi / gif

I came here hoping to see some discussion of the pronunciation of "fungus" and "fungi", which normally yields all kinds of claims about how G should be pronounced.

The other famous example possibly worth mentioning is the image format, GIF, which people mispronounce "jif" despite the G representing "Graphic". PhilipBroughtonMills (talk) 22:57, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

"Hard" and "soft"…?

This is a linguistically detailed article which regardless uses the terms "hard" and "soft" without batting an eyelid. This risks giving the impression that these are some kind of actual linguistic terms, rather than purely ad-hoc labels that can stand for just about anything (velarized/palatalized, unvoiced/voiced, oral/nasal…)

I see two main options (not mutually exclusiv) for fixing this:

1. An explicit explanation that "soft" and "hard" are not terms with a specific meaning.
2. Liberal application of scare quotes.

Any thoughts?

(This same argument naturally applies to Hard and soft C just as well.)

--Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 20:08, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Option 1 sounds fine to me (the lede would be a good place for it). As for option 2, I'd rather see a smattering of scare quotes than a liberal application; for some reason, I was under the impression that we used scare quotes somewhere here, but I see now that we don't. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 12:08, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree that this is a problem. My take is that the terms are a useful shorthand, and since they are widely used it is appropriate to use them in the encyclopedia, but it is also important to point out they are not "proper" terms. Unless anybody disagrees, I would adopt both of Trɔpʏliʊm's suggestions by amending the lede thus:

[...] two distinct phonemes that, in English, are called hard and soft ⟨g⟩. The use of the terms "hard" and "soft" is an ad hoc shorthand, rather than a phonetic description; the sound of a "hard ⟨g⟩" (which often precedes [...] while the sound of a "soft ⟨g⟩" (typically before ⟨i⟩, ⟨e⟩, or ⟨y⟩) may be [...]

I have mentioned this at Talk:Hard and soft C since it would be logical to take a consistent position. Quīsquīlliān (talk) 20:40, 14 September 2020 (UTC)