A simple question

[Gary R Wheeler]

Because Dijit™ is a registered trademark of Eastman Kodak Company, my employer.

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[Pravarakhya]

I started hating myself for writing stupid language rules which dont make any sense...

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[Roger Wright]

Featherho. As in, "Nice boa, Featherho!"

"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"

[Mark_Wallace]

Because it's derived from Latin, and precedes an "i" (if it preceded a, o, or u, it would be a hard sound, as in "go").

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

[Mark_Wallace]

dighn wrote:

You are looking for logic in a language that has none

English has lots of logic. That's the problem.

I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!

[smcnulty2000]

The short answer is the one everyone else gave; the language is a hodgepodge. The word "digit" comes as a measurement from Ancient Roman times. It is Mediterranean in origin. The word probably came north with the Normans in 1066. They were fond of a "J" sound where the Saxons would have used a sound closer to a "K". Several etymologies trace "digit" to 1398 but it is older than that. That does tell us about when it appeared in "English" writing, and that was before the original project Gutenburg, of course. So figure it was hand written about then. Spelling was pretty fluid back then. Nobody yet knew a reason to standardize. And at that time the I and J hadn't yet separated so the J wasn't really available as an option. Add on to that that a given literate monk might be from another country than England and it would take a language or history professor to give you the best guess at a real answer. We might have a real clue if we ever saw the 1398 reference and maybe knew who wrote it at that time. Simple question regarding English is often not the case. Good question, though. Wish I knew the answer. All of the above are just chaseable factors.

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[Anna Jayne Metcalfe]

d@nish wrote:

Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"?

Because it's fun to confuse the tourists. ;P

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[Bill Seddon]

Writing as Mark Twain Samuel Clemens did have a plan to fix the language. I can't find a link to the whole article but this will give the jist of his proposal: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/humor/marktwain.cfm[^] His proposal also dealt with pesky details like 'g' being 'guh' and 'gee' arbitarily.

[hairy_hats]

Fanshawe.

I hope you realise that hamsters are very creative when it comes to revenge. - Elaine

[hairy_hats]

It'd not an English word but a borrowing so doesn't follow English rules, such as they are.

I hope you realise that hamsters are very creative when it comes to revenge. - Elaine

[hairy_hats]

English is about learning exceptions, not rules.

I hope you realise that hamsters are very creative when it comes to revenge. - Elaine

[Frank Peelo]

Pravarakhya wrote:

ginger (exception)

No -- both instances of g in that word are pronounced as in gin. There has been a move to mispronounce both gs in that word, in order to deprecate red-headed people. But it's wrong, and unfair, especially given how good-looking red-headed people can be.

[Julian Nicholls]

That's pronounced Fanshaw, or if you're really posh, Festonhaw.

[Finbar]

It's just part of the magic of languages.

[Guyverthree]

the reason this changes is because of the I placed after it. Sometimes a placement of a letter after another changes the sound that the letter makes. in digit it is like git the I changes the sound that the G makes.

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[Richard Jones]

A comedian on a talk show was giving an example of pronunciation. Take "gh" from "enough". Take "o" from "women". Take "ti" from "nation". You get "ghoti" pronounced "fish".

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[ElrondCT]

d@nish wrote:

Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"?

G followed by either E or I is often pronounced soft (gesture, gibberish, etc.). I don't know that there's a rule--except to say that a soft sound is typically the case when the word is borrowed/derived from Latin or one of its successor languages, which follow that rule (G followed by A, O, or U is hard; G followed by E or I is soft). "Digit" comes from Latin "digitalis" = finger. But there's no rule to tell you when a word is borrowed from Latin vs. being a Germanic/Anglo-Saxon word (get, give). The most basic words of the language are Germanic.

[ElrondCT]

Richard Jones wrote:

A comedian on a talk show was giving an example of pronunciation. Take "gh" from "enough". Take "o" from "women". Take "ti" from "nation". You get "ghoti" pronounced "fish".

Not original with the comedian. It's often been attributed to George Bernard Shaw, but there are indications it was around before him (i.e., in the 1800s)...

[Bminas]

There is a very comprehensive article at Wikipedia on this subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography[^] Languages do not evolve in complete isolation. Much of English spelling is a result of loan words. In many instances, the original transcription from a different alphabet is preserved in the spelling. One of the examples in the article concerns the apparent inconsistent useage of the letters y and i in non-final positions, which in some cases is a result of Greek versus Germanic origins. The various uses of g are listed in a table.

[Kevin Li Li Ken un]

Speaking from the point of view of an amateur "phonologist" (if there is such a thing), I believe the association between the normal G and normal J sounds isn't too strange. The G in any context back in the old days might have very well been pronounced as G. Overall changes in the pronunciation habits of the speakers eventually changed the G sound to a J sound when pronounced before E, I, and Y. This is the same in Italian, and in French (which influenced English greatly) the G can become a ZH (which is similar to J if you think of it as "DZH"). To point out another example (using Chinese because it's completely disconnected from the Romance languages, yet share some similar sound changes), the character 健 is pronounced [gin] in the Cantonese dialect, but [jian] in the Mandarin dialect. The Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese pronunciations are [ken]/[kien], [gen] ("gun" to the American ear), and [ken] respectively. Historically, the Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese were exposed to Chinese culture well before the Mandarin dialect was born, so it shows that the G sound softened to J and not the other way around.

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