Hard and soft G

A hard g vs. a soft g is a feature that occurs in many languages, including English, in which two distinct major sounds (phonemes) are represented by the Latin letter g. A hard g is pronounced as a voiced plosive, while a soft g is pronounced as a fricative or affricate; in the case of English, these sounds are represented by [g] (like in "gargle"), and usually by [ʤ] (like in "George"), respectively.

English

General overview

General rules/characteristics

In English, the hard g is the sound of the "g" in "get", "give" and "gallon" (/g/), as distinct from the soft g in "gentle" and "giant" (/ʤ/). In words generally encountered that are entirely of Romance origin, or partly so (such as all or some of a particular word being derived from French, which is further derived from Latin, and which is ultimately derived from Greek), a soft g usually occurs immediately before the letters "e", "i" and "y" , while the hard g occurs in other positions. In words generally encountered that are of purely Germanic origin, g is usually hard. For other words generally encountered that are of purely non-Romance/non-Germanic origin, g is typically (but not always) hard.

Notable semi-exceptions include a significant number of words of strictly Old English/Middle English origin which contain a "dg(e)" letter combination pronounced as a soft g, such as ridge, bridge, wedge, and badge, as well as some words of Greco-Romance origin which contain both a hard and soft g such as gynecology. (Other notable irregularities include margarine, pronounced with a soft g; gaol and gaoler, alternative spellings of jail and jailer but respectively pronounced the same; as well as a few American English spellings such as judgment and abridgment, pronounced the same as the more-common-in-British English spellings judgement and abridgement.)

g versus c; “neatness” issues

English orthography presents many challenges due to its very irregular spelling pattern, despite many "general rules" that exist within English. The pronunciation behavior of the letter g in English can be especially challenging to master due to a number of factors. It also forms a notable contrast to the pronunciation situation with the letter "c", which likewise has hard and soft variants. In essence, g presents itself as "significantly orthographically messier" than c in English. Why is this?

Firstly, as previously alluded to, both hard and soft g do frequently appear before e, i, and y in English — unlike, analogously, with the letter c, which is almost never hard before those letters in English. This leads to a "somewhat messier" situation with g as opposed to c in regards to "visually clueing" the reader as to when g is hard or soft. It is true, again, that words of strictly non-Romance origin tend to only contain g's which are hard, and words derived from Romance sources generally have soft g's before e, i, and y (and hard g's elsewhere). A word such as "together", for example, seems to look non-Romance (as opposed to words such as general and religious), and even more so due to the "th" letter combination within it (although th does appear in some words derived from Romance sources, such as discotheque and cathedral).

Thus, the g in together, despite being immediately before an e, is "clued" to be pronounced hard (that is, as /g/). (And, our clue here is still just a strong hunch, but yet a good hunch for us if we weren't totally sure how to pronounce this word.) However, in a word like target, the Romance–versus–non-Romance nature of this word (and subsequent clueing of how to pronounce the g within it) is not so visually apparent.

(The word target actually entered Modern English from Middle English, which derived it from Middle French, which derived it from Old French, which borrowed it from Germanic sources. It is pronounced with a hard g. A somewhat humorous anecdote regarding this word, which makes a strong pass at illustrating the blurring of the hard/soft orthographic dichotomy with g in English, is found with the name of the American discount department store chain Target. Due to its "cheap chic" merchandise selection, Target's name is sometimes sardonically or endearingly pronounced not as "TARG-itt" /ˈtɑrgɪt/, but with the pseudo-French pronunciation "tar-ZHAY" /tɑrˈʒeɪ/ — most notably here, replacing the hard g with a soft g [albeit a French one].)

Secondly, it is also noteworthy that unlike the letter "c", which also has hard and soft variants and to which there is an English letter which consistently has the hard-c sound — namely, "k" — the letter g has no analogous letter which consistently has the hard-g sound. This second issue (along with some of the just-mentioned first issue) leads to special issues regarding the "neatness" of orthography when we add suffixes to words which end in a hard-g sound.

Getting back to c, we can create the combination "ck" which consistently carries the hard-c sound of /k/. When words are developed which end with ck, such as "pick", the addition of suffixes beginning with e, i, or y — such as picker, pickiest, and picky — gives the reader (who has a pronunciation knowledge of the root word being suffixed, and at least a basic reading level of English) a very intuitive feeling of how the suffixed word is still pronounced. In other words, the k "insulates" the c in these words from being immediately next to e, i, and y, and thus we still "clearly know" that the root component of these suffixed words still ends in a /k/ sound, and also has no /s/ or "soft-c" sound added next to it. In fact, in certain root words that end in c as opposed to ck, such as panic and frolic, we replace their final-letter c with a ck when we add suffixes to them, such as with the suffixed words panicked and frolicking — thus still communicating the same "/k/-sound preservation" idea.

(Also, the ck in these just-mentioned suffixations [such as picky and frolicking] acts as a set of marker letters to help indicate that the vowel immediately before the ck keeps its same pronunciation, and doesn't become a long vowel. The same vowel-preservation-message effect is also achieved by the doubled consonants as found in the suffixed forms spinning, crabby, clammy, and baggily. [If Modern English had evolved to be more tolerant of words ending in a k which isn't immediately preceded by a double-vowel combination, as well as much more tolerant of the "kk" letter combination, we could have developed (at least in theory) English spellings such as pikk, pikky, froli(k)k, and froli(k)king — and the kk in such words would arguably typically be as "clean and intuitive" as ck is.] Regarding the "baggily" example just shown, a key issue regarding the doubling of a root-word-final g [or, instead, making a "related" letter combination as an alternative to a root-ending gg, such as "gh"] to aid in "reader-friendly suffixation" follows next.)

What is now worth mentioning at this point is that there reasonably appears to be no analogous g-containing letter combination — or even a combination containing no g at all — that we can create to aid in the "equally clean and intuitive" suffixation and pronunciation of words with roots that end with the hard-g (as opposed to hard-c) sound. For example, we could double the root-word-final g (which is usually what we actually do when we add suffixes to g-ending words, such as with "bag" → "bagging" and "hog" → "hoggishness"), or make a non-doubled-letter digraph such as gh (leading to spellings such as fogh, hogh, foghy, and hoghing instead of fog, hog, foggy, and hogging). However, the "neatness nature" of letter combinations such as "gg"/"gh" placed right before a suffix — even if such combinations occur as a result of inventing "suffixation-ready" novel root forms such as fogg or hogh — is still "not quite as elegant and intuitive" as we get with the ck combination (where it serves an analogous purpose and occupies an analogous spatial position to the root-final "gg"/"gh" we just talked about) in words such as picky, slacker, and mimicking.

Finally, opposed to c, there are also more special-letter combinations containing g that one must "rote learn" to pronounce correctly, including some "rather messy" ones such as the "ough" combination which can be pronounced numerous ways and is notorious among those learning English as a foreign language. Yet, much more often than not, the letter g, where found within English words and in conjunction with other letters, triggers a strong level of intuition — frequently very strong — to clue the reader (with at least a basic reading level of English) to the correct pronunciation of it in the words that it appears in. This is due to rules of thumb and general patterns that govern its pronunciation, despite the many irregularities involved.

Suffixation

There are many English words that end in a hard-g sound (such as bag, fog, rag, and pig), and suffixation of them creates a few general patterns to make note of. For English words whose root word ends in hard g which have the -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -ism, -ist, -edness, -ish(ness), or -(l)y–related (including -ily, -iness, -ier, -iest, -ingly, -edly, and -ishly) suffixes added — such as bagged/bagging/baggy/baggier/baggily/bagginess/baggiest, bigger/biggest, hoggish/hoggishly/hoggingly/hoggishness, Piggly within Piggly Wiggly (assuming that Piggly comes from a modification of pig, and not as a result of making an adjectival or adverbial form of a "shadow nonce word" piggle), road-hoggism, ruggedly/ruggedness, and druggist — the hard-g sound at the end of the root word is retained, and no soft-g sound is added. For example, bagged is pronounced /bægd/, not as /ˈbæːʤ(ə)d/ nor as /ˈbægːʤ(ə)d/. (English root words ending in g are commonly of Germanic origin; adding the aforementioned suffixes to them maintains the Germanic-pattern, hard-final-g sound in the root component of these suffixed Germanic words.)

The root-word-final g for these types of words (with the aforementioned suffixes) is, as a general rule, doubled (for example, "bag" → "bagg" + "ed"), creating an endocentric digraph, and yielding spellings such as bagged/bagging. Furthermore, in regards to pronunciation, the doubled g does not result in a geminated (that is, elongated) g sound (i.e., with bagged, we don't get the pronunciation /bægːd/ when we double the root-word-final g). (There are occasional exceptions to the doubled-letter spelling rule just mentioned, such as when adding the -ly suffix in some instances, which are explained later.)

A silent e sometimes occurs at the end of a word — or at the end of a component root word that is part of a larger word — with g immediately before the silent e. In this situation, the e usually serves a marking function that helps to indicate that the g immediately before it is soft. Examples include image and management. (Such a silent e may further serve a marking function of helping to indicate that a vowel which appears immediately before that g — or the first vowel which appears before that g — is pronounced as a long vowel, as in rage, oblige, and range. When a vowel appears immediately before a "dge" combination, this vowel is typically short, as in bridge and fudge.)

For suffixed words (generally Romance-derived) which are derived from root words ending in "ge" in where the g has a soft-g sound and the e is silent (e.g., root words such as change, manage, and image), the addition of the aforementioned suffixes (yielding words such as changing, manager, and Imagism/Imagist) follows this general spelling and pronunciation rule: the final e of the root word is dropped, and the root word (what remains of it) retains its original pronunciation. This includes the retention of the soft-g sound immediately before the dropped e and added suffix; e.g., "change" [/ʧeɪnʤ/] → "changing" [/ˈʧeɪnʤɪŋ/]) — and this soft-g retention is in alignment with the general rule for Romance words: specifically, pronunciation of a soft g before e, i, or y.

Adding "s" to the end of the just-mentioned types of root words ending in -ge (e.g., change → changes) to create a plural or third-person-singular form follows this general rule: no letters are dropped and the root word retains its original pronunciation, but the "es" at the end of the word is pronounced /əz/ (e.g., "change" /ˈʧeɪnʤ/ → "changes" /ˈʧeɪnʤəz/).

Essentially stated, when you add a suffix which starts with e, i, or y to the aforementioned types of root words, you generally get the aforementioned suffixation patterns (with some neologisms notably sometimes excepted: for example, a proponent of frequent change might be labeled a Changist or, perhaps instead, a Changeist [the latter with an added e], depending on the spelling style preferred by a particular organization, or personal spelling preferences, and so forth). For adding specific suffixes (to such root words) which start with e, i, or y but which weren't just mentioned (such as "-ify" and "-ize"/"-ise") — as might occasionally be added to root forms in order to create rarely-used words or neologisms — check with a dictionary, style guide, or other reliable source(s) for information and clues as to the proper suffixation form.

(For example, "bag" + "-ify" can yield "bagify" [with one g] in some computer-programming contexts, or be spelled "baggify" [with two g's] in some other contexts. Also, it is worth noting that the addition of suffixes [to the aforementioned types of root words] which don't begin with e, i, or y typically don't cause a doubling of a root-word-final g nor cause any dropping of letters [e.g., "smug" + "-ness" → "smugness"; "arrange" + "-ment" → "arrangement"]. More on the suffixation of neologisms, and more on a few other special-suffixation cases [beyond letter-doubling issues], follows later.)

In a few suffixes such as "-gion" and "-gious", the letter "i" frequently acts as a silent letter and a marker vowel to help indicate that the g before it is soft, due to a sound-omission evolution called elision. Examples include region, contagious, and — depending on pronunciation preference — vestigial (the "-gial" in it can be pronounced as /ʤɪəl/ or as /ʤəl/).

There are several cases in English in where two or more words are derived from the same root component(s), and one or more of them have a hard-g sound at or towards the end of the word, but one or more other word(s) built from the same root component(s) have a soft-g sound for the analogous g that appears in them. For example, contrast analog(ue) and analogous (both with a hard g) vs. analogy (has a soft g); –and– prodigal (has a hard g) vs. prodigy and prodigious (both with a soft g). In all these cases, g is soft before i and y, but hard before a, o, and u, which mimics a general pattern found for Romance-origin words. (The suffix -logy entered French by way of Latin and ultimately from Greek, it should be noted.)

ng, gg, and dg letter combinations

ng

The ng two-letter combination in English frequently forms an exocentric digraph which indicates a single phone — as found in the word sing — that is different from either the /n/ or hard-g /g/ sound. It is represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ŋ/, and is described as a velar nasal sound. It is similarly found in the words singer and ringer, which are pronounced as /ˈsɪŋə/ (British English) or /ˈsɪŋɚ/ (American English), and /ˈrɪŋə/ (British English) or /ˈrɪŋɚ/ (American English), respectively. However, in a few words, ng can represent a two-phoneme /ŋg/ (that is, "/ŋ/" + hard-g "/g/") sound, or a two-phoneme /ng/ (that is, "/n/" + hard-g "/g/", absent of any "/ŋ/") sound, or the two-phoneme, three-phone /nʤ/ (that is, "/n/" + soft-g "/ʤ/") sound (the latter more commonly found in words ultimately of Romance origin).

Despite their rhyming nature to the last two word examples, /ŋg/ examples are found in finger and linger; they are pronounced as /ˈfɪŋgə/ (British English) or /ˈfɪŋgɚ/ (American English), and /ˈlɪŋgə/ (British English) or /ˈlɪŋgɚ/ (American English), respectively. Other words with the /ŋg/ sound are England, angle, bungle, and jungle. The /ng/ examples are occasionally found in some words, especially in compound words such as shinguard and Wingate, where the ng is formed by combining two separate root words. Penguin is a non-compound example where ng is also pronounced this way (although it may have derived from the Welsh compound construction pen gwyn, meaning "white head", referring to its winter plumage). In careful speech, these words are pronounced as /ˈʃɪnˌgɑːd/ (British English) or /ˈʃɪnˌgɑɹd/ (American English); /ˈwɪnˌgeɪt/; and /ˈpɛngwɪn/, respectively, although in normal speech, the ng is realized as /ŋg/, due to anticipatory assimilation. The /nʤ/ example is found in significant numbers of words such as danger (/ˈdeɪnʤə/ in British Received Pronunciation; /ˈdeɪnʤɝ/ in US pronunciation) and tangent (/'tænʤənt/). Ng appearing at the end of any English word (such as sing, hanging, and morning) is invariably pronounced /ŋ/.

Root words ending in ng almost invariably neither double the root-word-final g if a suffix is added to them, nor usually add (at least in standard dialects) a hard-g sound immediately after the root word in such cases (e.g., the present participle of bring is bringing, and it is pronounced /ˈbrɪŋɪŋ/, not /ˈbrɪŋgɪŋ/). (Invariably, no soft-g sound, either, accompanies the root-word-final ng as a result of such suffixation; that is, we don't get a pronunciation, revisiting the last example, such as "BRIN-jing".) A pronunciation exception is found in longer/longest and stronger/strongest, in where the ng may be pronounced either as /ŋ/ or as /ŋg/ (i.e., /ˈlɒŋ(g)ə/ [British English] or /ˈlɔːŋ(g)ɚ/ [US pronunciation]; /ˈlɒŋ(g)əst/ [British English] or /ˈlɔːŋ(g)ɚst/ [US pronunciation]; etc.).

gg

The gg letter combination frequently forms an endocentric digraph pronounced as a single hard g (that is, /g/). It is not only found in aforementioned suffixed words such as bagged/bagginess, but in many others, including English proper names, such as egg, dagger, and Briggs. However, the word suggest and derivatives of it (such as suggestion and suggestive) follow a normal, Romance-origin pattern for the gg within them: the first g is hard, and the second one is soft (e.g., /səgˈʤɛst/ — although the hard g may be dropped when pronouncing suggest and its derivatives due to elision, thus yielding /səˈʤɛst/, etc.). In some proper names encountered in the Anglosphere, a few other variants can be found, such as Ringgold being pronounced /ˈrɪŋˌgoʊld/ or /ˈrɪŋˌgəʊld/ (the ng forms a single phone /ŋ/, followed by a hard-g sound contributed by the second g); SIGGRAPH pronounced /ˈsɪːˌgːræf/ (the hard-g sound is not doubled, but it undergoes [and the vowel sound right before it also undergoes] elongation — a process referred to as gemination); and the Italian surname DiMaggio pronounced /dəˈmæˌʤioʊ/ in English, or in Italian as /diˈmaddʒio/. (Suffixation issues for words ending in gg and some other special cases are discussed later.)

dg

The dg letter combination typically yields an equivalent to the soft-g (/ʤ/) sound, especially when immediately followed by the letter e. Rare exceptions would be found in, for example, the occasional word/English name such as Edgar, endgame, and goodgolly, which would yield /dg/ for this letter combination within such words instead. Dg pronounced as English soft g (that is, /ʤ/) is found in several words and English names such as budget, bridge, judgment (also spelled judgement), and Padgett.

Special cases

Silent marker letters

A few English words (including some Anglo-Celtic proper nouns) contain a silent "u" immediately between a g and an e, i or y, which helps to indicate that the g remains hard in these words. Examples include guess, guild, Guinness, and guy. There are also a few English words which have a silent "ue" letter combination immediately before a hard g at the end of a word or root word, such as tongue, leagues, and intrigued. The derivatives tonguing and intriguing, however, would exhibit the just-illustrated pattern of a silent u immediately between a hard g and a non-silent vowel.

(The Italian loanword segue, pronounced "SEG-way" or "SAY-gway", which thus has a pronounced vowel sound in its "gue" letter combination, has a modestly different spelling pattern for its suffixed forms -s, -ed, and -ing than a word like intrigue [with its root-word-final "gue = hard g"] has: we get segues, segued, and segueing as opposed to intrigues, intrigued, and intriguing [the latter with no e].)

A silent e is also found immediately between a g (or dg) and an o in several English words and proper nouns — such as pigeon, bludgeon, and Geoffrey — which fosters the rule-based soft-g pronunciation of "(d)g" in these words. Also, in a few instances, a silent "h" appears immediately between a g and an e, i or y, such as in ghetto, ghillie (also spelled gillie), and dinghy; this fosters the rule-based pronunciation of hard g in these words. This latter convention is found a number of times in Italian loanwords including proper names/trademarks common in the Anglosphere (such as ghetto and Ghirardelli).

gh-, gm-, and gn-containing words

The letter combination "gh" in English frequently (but not always, as just alluded to) functions as a silent letter pair. (In some words, it arguably can further be viewed as part of a larger group of silent letters, such as in furlough, which is pronounced like "FUR-low": the last three letters could arguably all be said to function as silent letters.) The g that is part of such a gh silent-letter pair cannot be practically said to be either hard or soft. This silent gh is typically found at or towards the end of a word (e.g., sight, bright, high, ought, brought), or at or towards the end of a root word to which one or more suffixes have been added and/or which forms part of a compound word (e.g., freights, weighing, brightening, nightmare, Knightsbridge). The "igh" three-letter combination consistently contains, where found in English, a gh which is silent. Exceptions to this rule are found in a few compound words, frequently regarded as colloquial or slang, such as pigheaded and bighouse.

The letter combinations "ough" and "augh" present a particularly interesting phenomenon in English. The gh is usually pronounced as /f/ or not pronounced at all in these letter clusters; in fact, in hiccough and lough, alternative spellings of hiccup and loch, it is even pronounced as /p/ and dialectically as the voiceless velar fricative /x/, respectively. The "ough"/"augh" letter combinations are found in a significant number of English words, as well as some Anglo-Celtic proper nouns: for example, rough, laugh, trough, bough, Dougherty, and McCaughey. The vowel sounds within ough and augh letter clusters can take on many different pronunciations. The aforementioned six words are pronounced as: /ɹʌf/; /lɑːf/ [UK & Australian English] or /læf/ [American English]; /trɒf/ [British Received Pronunciation] or /trɑːf/ or /trɔːf/ [US pronunciation]; /baʊ/; and as "DOE-er-tee" (first syllable rhyming with "go") and "McCoy", respectively. Understandably, the ough and augh letter combinations present a particular challenge to non-English speakers, and even to native English speakers themselves, in learning English spelling.

Of a somewhat lesser chaotic nature than ough and augh, but which still show a special irregularity, are silent g's which appear in "gm" and "gn" combinations found at the end of some English words, or at the end of the root word in some suffixed words. Examples include diaphragm, phlegm, paradigms, benign, feign, designer, alignment, and arraignment. Rarely, gn can have a pronunciation of /nj/ (that is, the "n" sound plus the "y" sound in the word "yet") within some English words, such as within the Italian loanword lasagna and within the French-influenced word poignant.

The gn combination with a silent g also occasionally appears in an initial position in a word. Examples include gnu, derived from Khoikhoi t'gnu and a common name for the wildebeest, as well as gnostic, gnaw, and gnat — and, as a somewhat light-hearted example, the informal term gnurk, which can refer to a loved one who is cuddly or who snuggles up to his or her partner with a nuzzling action. (GNU — as written in all capital letters as such — is a recursive acronym which forms the name of a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. The name is pronounced /ˈgnuː/ — most notably, with a non-silent, hard g. GNU's logo, not surprisingly, is a cartoonish gnu head.)

Omitted-e spellings

In American English, judgment, abridgment, acknowledgment, and lodgment (and derivatives which add letters to the end of these words, such as judgmentally and acknowledgments) are usually written as such, yet the g in these words has a soft-g (/ʤ/) sound. However, American English also recognizes the British English spellings judgement, abridgement, acknowledgement, and lodgement (and analogous derivatives such as judgementally) as alternative spellings which carry the same pronunciations as the omitted-e spellings.

A few trademarks and proper nouns, such as Fudgsicle and Ridgway, show a similar phenomenon in where there is an omission of a "normally-expected" e, but the g is pronounced as a soft g. Proper nouns spelled as such can also typically be found with the e included as an alternative spelling for different bearers of the name.

Another example of a non-proper-noun word that has a soft-g–sounding dg followed by a consonant instead of a "normally-expected" e — and which is a standard spelling in both British and American English — is fledgling, which is pronounced "FLEDGE-ling".

Also, American English favors the spelling aging as the present-participle form of age, as well as for its use as a noun (such as with the word's use in gerontology), but British English favors the spelling ageing in these senses. The last paragraph of the next section discusses a few related examples of a sometimes-disappearing e occurring af the end of standard-English root words which end in a soft-g sound (occurring when standard suffixes are added to such root words).

Other suffix additions

Infrequently, there will be a root word ending in a double g, such as egg, with the double g pronounced as /g/. When adding the aforementioned suffixes mentioned in the "General overview" section, no letters are dropped, and the sound of the root word is preserved, such as in egging and eggish. And rarely, one will encounter suffixed root words ending in hard g which either 1) don't have a single short-vowel letter immediately before the root-word-final hard g, –or– 2) don't have a single-letter monophthong, pronounced similar to a short vowel, immediately before the root-word-final hard g. One is apt to find this in neologisms or fanciful spellings such as mooging (as a #1-type example), in reference to performing on a Moog musical synthesizer, or (as a #2-type example) dawging (as in "Stop dawging me" as an alternative to "Stop dogging me"). These types of suffixed words typically follow the same suffix-addition procedure applied to egg that was just mentioned.

Root words ending in "-gue" pronounced as /g/, as in tongue and intrigue, follow the same suffix-addition rule mentioned for change, with a few exceptions. First, the addition of an "-s" suffix does not cause an /əz/ pronunciation at the end of the suffixed word, but just adds a /z/ sound (e.g., "tongue" /tʌŋ/ → "tongues" /tʌŋz/). Secondly, it may be desirable — especially in neologism-type suffixed words — to add suffixes such as "ish" with a hyphen added before them, as well as drop no letters, to aid in word recognition and spelling (e.g., "tongue" → "tonguish" or "tongue-ish" — although "roguish" appears standard and preferred as a derivative of "rogue").

For some root words/names ending in g (other than those which end in ng), the addition of the -ly suffix does not result in a doubling of the root-word-final g, as in, for example, smugly, snugly, and Tagly Tags. Check with a dictionary or other reliable source if in doubt regarding the spelling of related words/names which end in -ly. (Again, as previously indicated, words such as strong which do end in ng typically don't double the root-word-final g when -ly is added [e.g., "strong" → "strongly"].) And relatedly, the words anger and hunger produce the derivatives angry/angrier/angriest/angrily/angriness and hungry/hungrier/hungriest/hungrily/hungriness for their adjectival, comparative, superlative, adverbial, and "the state/quality/measure of being angry/hungry" word formations, respectively — notably here, the root-word e is dropped, but the hard-g sound is maintained in these particular derivatives of anger and hunger.

There furthermore can be rare cases of neologisms or fanciful spellings (quite possibly derived from proper names), which are derived from root words ending in a soft g (such as rog as short for roger), or which end in ge but which is pronounced as /g/ or /gi/ or some other manner other than as /ʤ/ (such as Lange [/læŋ/] or Kresge [/ˈkrɛsgi/]). Typically, when these words are treated as "modifier words" and suffixed, the sound of the root word will be preserved, but the convention followed for suffixation is not standardized: suffixation can yield roged, rogged, rog-ed, rog'ed, Lange-ish, Kresgeism, etc. It is best to check with past sources for clues as to what is best regarding suffixed spellings for these types of cases. However, using a hyphenated suffixed form on short root words such as "rog" (i.e., rog-ed) may be easiest for the sake of the reader if a word is a protologism. (Depending on stylistic tastes and clues for any past usage, the use of an apostrophe in place of a hyphen may be used for these cases [i.e., rog'ed, rog'ing], especially when adding the -ed or -ing suffixes. This convention arguably may be even a bit more acceptable to do when dealing with suffixation of root words like Lange and rog which are short, and even a bit further acceptable to do when dealing with suffixation of root words which, like rog, are both short and written entirely in lowercase.)

Also, when performing suffixation of neologisms (or fanciful spellings of root words) ending in g or a g-type sound, it is good to avoid excessive confusion and ambiguity with other words. For more information regarding this, see the section on "Suffixation of neologisms" in the article on Hard and soft C for information regarding ambiguity avoidance and selection of the "best logical" spelling form — it essentially analogously applies to suffixed words ending in g or a g-type sound.

Finally, a few further notable spelling exceptions to the typical suffix-addition rules will be given for words which are found in Standard English. Singeing is the present-participle form of singe; this is ostensibly the case in order to avoid confusion with the word singing (the present-participle form of sing). The expected pronunciation, however, is retained: "SINGE-ing". The words orangey (which can refer to the fruit or the colour), Orangeism, and Orangeist can be cited as further spelling exceptions to the normal rules, although these words are also spelled orangy, Orangism, and Orangist, respectively. (Orangey, spelled with an e, was also the name of a red tabby cat who was a talented animal actor in film and television.) Also, cagey can arguably be cited as a further-exception example here, although the word is also spelled cagy; both spellings are pronounced "CAGE-ee".

Pronunciation changes

A special pronunciation situation arises for g in the words disgrace, disguise, and disgust (and their derivatives such as disgusting). Specifically, the g which appears as the fourth letter of these words (that is, immediately after the "dis-" prefix) is frequently pronounced as /k/ (that is, as a devocalized variant of hard g), although it may be pronounced as an actual hard g. For example, disgusting can be pronounced as /ˌdɪˈskʌstɪŋ/ –or– /ˌdɪsˈgʌstɪŋ/ [or as /ˌdɪzˈgʌstɪŋ/ –or– /ˌdɪzˈkʌstɪŋ/]. The /sk/ pronunciation variant (as well as, arguably, the /zg/ and /zk/ variants among those who most commonly pronounce the dis- prefix as /dɪs/ as opposed to /dɪz/) for the "sg" in these words arises due to anticipatory assimilation.

The derivative legged has the expected spelling form for it, but in American English, legged is commonly pronounced as /ˈlɛgəd/ or /ˈleɪgəd/, thus with two syllables. And, in both American and British English, ragged is commonly pronounced, and rugged is typically pronounced, with an /əd/ ending, especially when they have the common/typical meanings of "frayed or rough" and "durable or rough", respectfully. (Ragged, when used as slang, such as in sexual slang or within the slang expression "ragged off" to mean angry, is typically pronounced as one syllable [/ɹægd/].)

And as previously indicated, a few suffixed words derived from root words which end in ng (the prior examples were, again, longer/longest and stronger/strongest) can have the ng within them pronounced either as /ŋ/ or as /ŋg/. (Other related derivatives such as wronger, wrongest, and longish can also show this phenomenon.)

Special instances for loanwords

In some French loanwords in English, such as genre, mirage and sabotage, their soft-g sound is, instead, a "zh" sound (i.e., the "s" sound in "vision") as opposed to a "j" sound (as in "jump") — that is, /ʒ/ instead of /ʤ/. Such a pronunciation in these loanwords mimics the French mode of pronunciation for soft g. For such French-origin words ending in -ge, when suffixes are added, analogous spelling and pronunciation rules to what were previously mentioned for -ge–ending words (where the combination is pronounced /ʤ/) are followed (e.g., massage [/məˈsɑʒ/] → massages [/məˈsɑʒˌəz/] & massaging [/məˈsɑʒˌɪŋ/]).

For loanwords from non-Romance/non-Germanic sources, such as the Japanese loanword geisha, the Polish loanword pierogi, and the largely-Greek-derived gynecomastia, the g is frequently hard before the letters e, i, and y as well as in other instances. Greek and largely-Greek-derived loanwords provide an especially interesting case: for example, for words with the Greek suffix gyn-, the g is often (but not always) pronounced hard, but the suffix -(o)logy consistently possesses a soft g. Resulting from these phenomena, the word gynecology, for example, has an initial hard g, but has a soft g towards the end of the word. But, the Greek loanword gyros (a type of Greek sandwich) is usually considered to be properly or relatively properly pronounced as "YEAR-ohss" or "YEAR-ohzz" or as "GEAR-ohss" or "GEAR-ohzz" — that is, with either a hard g or something that could be viewed as a modified form of a soft g (that is, the "y" sound of "yet") or simply functioning as a silent letter. Gyros used as an abbreviation for gyroscopes begins with, however, a "standard" soft g (/ʤ/) sound (and is pronounced as rhyming with "high rose").

Alternative spelling in blogging, marketing, entertainment, etc.

Relating to what has been previously said regarding readability, sometimes suffixed words with a root-word-final g are spelled in a special manner in the blogosphere (and elsewhere) to aid in their correct pronunciation: i.e., bling-y or blinghy as an adjectival form of bling (which is short for bling-bling, which is flashy, gaudy, expressive jewelry associated with hip hop fashion and an associated ostentatious lifestyle). In the marketing sphere, the Mirro Aluminum Company had a cooking appliance designed for making eggs, omelets, and other foods that it called (and spelled as) the Eggory. These spelling conventions (i.e., the added hyphen and h in the former examples; the "-ory" instead of "-ery" in the latter example) strongly help clue the reader to not pronounce the g's in these words as soft (i.e., that the ng is pronounced as /ŋ/ in the former examples, and that the gg is pronounced as /g/ in the latter example).

Occasionally, hard g is replaced by "j" in some names of commercial entities, such as with Enerjy Software, a Massachusetts-based software-development business division, as well as with several North American radio stations which have a J (as well as an "M" somewhere before it) in their official station call letters and which use a moniker with the name "Majic" in it (e.g., the FM stations WMJI "Majic 105.7" in Cleveland, Ohio; WMXJ "Majic 102.7" in Miami, Florida; and CJMJ "Majic 100" in Ottawa, Ontario).

For a few English/Anglosphere first names, they are occasionally found spelled with a G which replaces a much-more-common J, such as in the alternative spellings Genna and Gennifer. However, Geoffrey is a fairly-common alternative spelling for the common English/Anglosphere first name Jeffrey. (The spelling forms with initial G's are pronounced the same as their counterpart spellings with initial J's, including the retention of the "j sound" [/ʤ/] at the beginning of the names.)

The 1980s comedy series Not Necessarily the News on the HBO premium-television network included the recitation of sniglets — defined as words that don't appear in the dictionary, but should — as one of its regular features. (Books of sniglets followed.) One such sniglet is bargarcs, which is pronounced like "BAR-jarks" (notably, with a soft g before the a), and is defined as "the streaks on a car's windshield from faulty wipers".

In a very rare case of j mimicking and replacing hard g, American New Wave band Devo hatched the character Booji Boy, which is pronounced like "Boogie Boy". The character, which was created to satirize infantile regression in Western culture, got his name-spelling due to a running out of the letter g when the band was using Letraset to produce captions for a film.

Other languages

All modern Romance languages make this distinction, except a few that have undergone spelling reforms such as Ladino or Haitian Creole. The soft g occurs before "e", "i" and "y" and is is pronounced /ʤ/ in Italian and Romanian, /ʒ/ in French, Portuguese and Catalan, and /x/ (or an allophone of it) in Spanish. The hard g occurs in all other positions and is pronounced /g/ (or an allophone of it) in all these languages.

The phoneme /g/ can occur before "e", "i" and "y" by putting a "u" after it (e.g. French gentil /ʒɑ̃ti/, guerre /ɡɛʁ/). In Italian and Romanian, an h is used instead of a u for the same purpose (e.g. Italian laghi /laɡi/; Romanian ghid /ɡid/). Conversely, the phoneme /ʒ/ can occur before "a" or "o" by putting an "e" or "i" after it (e.g. French mangeons /mɑ̃ʒɔ̃/; Italian giorno /ʤorno/; Romanian geam /ʤam/).

In Norwegian, in both the Nynorsk and Bokmål dialects, g has a "soft" pronunciation of y as in "yet" (that is, /j/) before "i" and "y", and a "hard" pronunciation of /g/ elsewhere. In Swedish, g is "hard" before before a consonant or a hard vowel ("a", "o", "u", "å"), where it has the /g/ sound. Before a soft vowel ("e", "i", "y", "ä", "ö"), g in Swedish is "soft", carrying the y sound in "yet" (again, as /j/). In Icelandic, a "soft" type of g, also producing the English consonantal y sound (again, /j/), occurs between a vowel and "i" or between a vowel and "j"; a "modified, 'relatively-soft-type' g" sound phonetically represented as /c/ (see voiceless palatal plosive), occurs initially in a word before "e", "i", "í", "y", "ý", "æ", and "j". Otherwise, "hard" or "relatively hard-sounding" forms for g are realized in Icelandic words: as /k/ when found initially, or before "n" or "l", or after a consonant; as /x/ between a vowel and "s" or between a vowel and "t"; and as /ɣ/ (the voiced counterpart to /x/) after vowels.

In Danish, g is typically pronounced as /g/, although it is usually silent when it immediately follows a vowel or is at the end of a word but part of an "-ig" letter combination. However, in some loanwords in Danish, it is pronounced as /ʒ/. In Dutch, g is typically pronounced as /x/ when found at the beginning of a word, and pronounced as /ʁ/ in other positions within a word. In some Dutch dialects, however, g is pronounced as /ɣ/. But, in some loanwords such as goal and bagage (baggage), g is pronounced, respectively, as /g/ and /zʲ/ (/sʲ/ instead of /zʲ/ in some dialects), although some Dutch speakers do use the French soft-g sound of /ʒ/ in loanwords such as bagage.

In German, g typically has "hard" or "relatively hard-sounding" forms: it is pronounced /ç/ (or as /k/ in Southern German) in the ending -ig; pronounced as /k/ at the end of a syllable; and otherwise, pronounced as /g/ or /g̊/. As with Danish (and sometimes Dutch), g can also be pronounced as /ʒ/ in some loanwords in German. However, in such loanwords, it is pronounced instead by many German speakers as /ʃ/ (for example, the French loanwords garage and orange can be pronounced as /garɑʒə/ and /oˑˈʀãʒə/, or as /garɑʃə/ and /oˑˈʀãʃ/, respectively).

In Luganda, g has a soft form /ʤ/ which occurs before "i" and "y", and a hard form /ɡ/ that occurs before other letters (although in fact only "a", "e", "o", "u" and "w" are possible). The letter y in Luganda is a consonant representing the semivowel /j/, and is always followed by a vowel. However, in the combination "gy", the y is silent; it softens the g and lengthens the following vowel, but is not itself pronounced. The Luganda y is thus analogous to the Romance e or i in words like French mangeons /mɑ̃ʒɔ̃/ or Italian giorno /ʤ'orno/, where a silent letter forces the g to take on its soft sound. Unlike these languages, however, Luganda has no orthographic mechanism for forcing a g to be hard, analogous to the silent u or h used in French or Italian respectively.

In Hebrew, which uses the Hebrew alphabet, the letter gimel ("ג") typically has the /g/ sound within Hebrew words, although in some Sephardic dialects, it is pronounced /ɡ/ or /ʒ/ when written with a dagesh (i.e., a dot placed inside the letter: "גּ"), and pronounced /ɣ/ when without a dagesh. Also, in Modern Hebrew, an apostrophe-like symbol called a Geresh can be added immediately to the left of a gimel (i.e., "ג׳") to indicate that the gimel is to be pronounced like the English soft-g sound (that is, as /ʤ/).

History

The soft g first appeared in Late Latin, by palatalization. Specifically, this alternation has its origins in a historical palatalization which took place in Late Latin, and led to a change in the pronunciation of the velar plosive [g] before the front vowels [e] and [i]. Later, other languages not descended from Latin, such as English, inherited this feature as an orthographic convention.

See also

• English orthography
• G
• Hard and soft C