![]() Scuba (Yes, that’s an acronym) isn’t pronounced “scubba”, despite it standing for “Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus”. JPE G isn’t pronounced “jay fe g”, despite it standing for “Joint Photo graphic Experts Group”. 4 of those don’t.īut the G stands for graphics, not ‘jraphics’! The interesting point is: There are 12 three-letter words in the English lan gua ge that start with the letter G, which is followed by an E, I, or Y. You can read about this linguistic phenomenon called “palatalization” on Jemully Media. ![]() English words of Romance origin: g em, g arage, g u ide.Digraphs like ng, gg, or dge have their own rules, which are not relevant to this debate, an therefore will be glossed over.When a G has to be pronounced hard before E, I, or Y, an extra letter has to be added, which is usually H or a silent U.When the G is on its own, before a consonant, or before A, O, or U, it is a hard G.When the G is before E, I, or Y, it is a soft G.Despite there being two different pronunciations for G, the rules are quite simple, and it only involves the next letter: In modern Romance lan gua ges like Italian or French, the soft G is just like our soft G (strictly speaking, French uses ⟨ʒ⟩ instead), while some others have a radically different pronunciation, like Spanish. On the contrary, Romance lan gua ges have two pronunciations of G: the hard G and the soft G. In Germanic lan gua ges, all of the G’s are pronounced with a hard G. Germanic lan gua ges, whose descendants include German, Dutch, and the Scandinavian ton gues, gave us words like “ gut”, “ gift”, or “ greet”. That is because En glish has taken in words from various sources, most of them from Germanic and Romance lan gua ges. From a purely lin guistic standpoint, a word spelled “g-i-f” could either be pronounced with a hard G or a soft G. Say hello to fuchsia (few-sha, not futch-see-a), Wednesday (wends-day, not wed-nes-day), colonel (kernel, not colon-L) and island (eye-land, not is-land). Get ready to learn some basic lin guistics!Įn glish spelling is so convoluted that even Phonics or the I-Before-E rule fails. Well, it’s not the only lo gical pronunciation. Note: In this page, every soft G is notated in green, and every hard G in red. Are there valid arguments for pronouncing it with a hard G?.Okay, but that only means it could be either.But graphics is pronounced with a hard G.This page’s headlines are in the format of what someone pronouncing GIF with a hard G might say: If you have any problems with the text below, send them to me via Twitter after looking through the rebuttals page. ![]() This is a documentation of the facts, of what the rules of the English language has to say about the pronunciation of GIF. This is not meant to counter any arguments that is done in the big red link above. This page is dedicated to those who are confused and want to learn what the correct pronunciation is, or those who want to convince a dear friend to see the world the same way you do. ![]() This Web page is an instruction on how to say the word “GIF” out loud, and the reasons behind why it is said like it is. Now available: THE TL DR EDITION Introduction ![]()
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