A simple question
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
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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So, how would you pronounce 'Featherstonhaugh'?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
The GH would have been pronounced much like the German CH today, but due to general speaker preferences the GH "disbanded" and became one of the following sounds instead: F, TH, or (silent).
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Many consonants in English have a hard sound and a soft sound. G is one of those. The vowels a, o, u following one of these consonants produces the hard sound. E and i produce the soft sound. However, there are many exceptions in English, especially in words that have been 'borrowed' from other languages. Probably more than you wanted to know. Sean
-Sean ---- It's not that I like expensive things, it's just that the things I like are expensive. - My Wife
I'm curious to know what makes a sound "hard" or "soft." According to textbooks, the G sound is considered soft when it palatalizes to a J sound, but to my ears, the normal G sound sounds "softer" than the J.
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So, how would you pronounce 'Featherstonhaugh'?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
I don't think these are flaws. These are rules. I don't know the rules, but I know they exist. The j's and g's are not arbitrarily used I beleive. The same thing happens for my native language (Portuguese). Here is an example: Viajar (to travel) Viagem (trip) Some might wonder why not use "j" in both words which have the same sounds. I don't know, but it could be just some language rule that comes all the way back from latin. Or the word "Viagem" came first, and when they turned it into a verb, it could use the "g" as "Viagar" would sound different than "Viagem", so the put in the "j" to make both of them sound equal. Here is how in portugues g and j sounds: ga = g from "gun" ge = g from "digit" gi = g from "digit" go = g from "gun" gu = g from "gun" ja = j from "jack" je = j from "jack" ji = j from "jack" jo = j from "jack" ju = j from "jack" I'd say they should use 'g' exclusive for "gun" like sound and 'j' exclusive for "jack" like sound. It would make everything simpler (is it Geep or Jeep?)
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:laugh: Me! Me! Call on me! I know the answer!
"To do is to be." [Descartes] "To be is to do." [Voltaire] "Do be do be do..."[Frank Sinatra]
There's a fair chance that you do! :-D
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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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".
"The activity of 'debugging', or removing bugs from a program, ends when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed." - "Datamation", January 15, 1984
I can explain the case for "enough" and "nation", but "women" defy explanation.
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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!
Does anyone agree that an English pronunciation engine's code would have a lot of stacked and nested "if" statements? I'd throw a couple of "switch"/"case" statements in there too for the sake of words that defy enough rules to fail the logic tests in all the "if" statements.
My GUID: ca2262a7-0026-4830-a0b3-fe5d66c4eb1d :) Now I can Google this value and find all my Code Project posts!
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
When g is followed by i or e it is usually (but not always) soft, like a j. In many words that want a hard g followed by i, they add a u to make it hard, as in guide. English gets this silly rule from French, though you'll also find it in other languages, like Italian (Giovanni = soft, Guido = hard). G wasn't in the original Latin alphabet -- it was added later to distinguish from the sound of C. Greek had gamma (from the Semitic gimmel), but G is an unrelated development. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G[^]
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
Ah, English, The language half the world speaks but does not understand. 1500 years of history in 5 minutes: So English is a language of conquest and thievery. Let's start with the native peoples of the British Isles, the Celts. They spoke a family of languages collectively know as Gaelic. Not much of Gaelic is left in the modern English language, I can only think of two words off the top of my head: "knoll" and "qwm" Knoll is a little hill, and qwm us a little valley. Yes, W can be a vowel. Early on The Romans invaded the isles and with them brought Latin and the Roman Alphabet. The Celts had their own writing system, but you know, he who conquerors makes the rules. So the Romans shoehorned their alphabet into Gaelic and started teaching Latin and Greek to the Celts. The problem was that Latin has sounds that Gaelic doesn't and Gaelic has sounds that Latin doesn't, so the Roman alphabet really doesn't work well for the Celtic people. So what do the Romans do? They stick in an H as a marker to indicate the preceding letter is not the Latin pronunciation but rather the local form CH (church), SH (shine), TH (thing), GH (enough), KH (Khanukkah) PH (phonics) and the H itself is silent (honor). Empires don't last forever and the Roman Empire fell. But there is always a new bully to take the place of the old one. Enter the Saxons, a Germanic group who invaded around the 5th century. There was actually a big Germanic push to the isles. Along with the Saxons came the Angles, Jutes, Danes, and Frisians. They were really good at imposing their will. They built castles and formed kingdoms and such. When you think Olde England, it is probably Saxons that you are thinking of. Of course that leads to Robin Hood, Robin was a Norman. The Normans were Vikings that had settled down in what is now France (ever hear of Normandy) Their language was very Nordic, but, just like English, it had evolved into what is now called Middle French, not quite French but way not Swedish by-golly-you-becha. So they Normans invade England which is occupied by the Saxons who are displacing the romanized Celts. And Boom! we get Middle English. Not exactly French, not quite English, way not Latin, Celtic, or Swedish by-golly-you-betcha. After the wars die down and people go back to living the best that they can, weird things start happening. Ethnic and national pride start to surface and people want to go back to the old ways of talking, well almost. Vowels start to shift E's become A's, A's become O's. OO and OU and AU differentiate. Words just st
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
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When g is followed by i or e it is usually (but not always) soft, like a j. In many words that want a hard g followed by i, they add a u to make it hard, as in guide. English gets this silly rule from French, though you'll also find it in other languages, like Italian (Giovanni = soft, Guido = hard). G wasn't in the original Latin alphabet -- it was added later to distinguish from the sound of C. Greek had gamma (from the Semitic gimmel), but G is an unrelated development. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G[^]
SterlingCamden wrote:
G wasn't in the original Latin alphabet -- it was added later to distinguish from the sound of C. Greek had gamma (from the Semitic gimmel), but G is an unrelated development.
It was also derived from the "C", hence the glyphs' similarities.
My GUID: ca2262a7-0026-4830-a0b3-fe5d66c4eb1d :) Now I can Google this value and find all my Code Project posts!
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Ah, English, The language half the world speaks but does not understand. 1500 years of history in 5 minutes: So English is a language of conquest and thievery. Let's start with the native peoples of the British Isles, the Celts. They spoke a family of languages collectively know as Gaelic. Not much of Gaelic is left in the modern English language, I can only think of two words off the top of my head: "knoll" and "qwm" Knoll is a little hill, and qwm us a little valley. Yes, W can be a vowel. Early on The Romans invaded the isles and with them brought Latin and the Roman Alphabet. The Celts had their own writing system, but you know, he who conquerors makes the rules. So the Romans shoehorned their alphabet into Gaelic and started teaching Latin and Greek to the Celts. The problem was that Latin has sounds that Gaelic doesn't and Gaelic has sounds that Latin doesn't, so the Roman alphabet really doesn't work well for the Celtic people. So what do the Romans do? They stick in an H as a marker to indicate the preceding letter is not the Latin pronunciation but rather the local form CH (church), SH (shine), TH (thing), GH (enough), KH (Khanukkah) PH (phonics) and the H itself is silent (honor). Empires don't last forever and the Roman Empire fell. But there is always a new bully to take the place of the old one. Enter the Saxons, a Germanic group who invaded around the 5th century. There was actually a big Germanic push to the isles. Along with the Saxons came the Angles, Jutes, Danes, and Frisians. They were really good at imposing their will. They built castles and formed kingdoms and such. When you think Olde England, it is probably Saxons that you are thinking of. Of course that leads to Robin Hood, Robin was a Norman. The Normans were Vikings that had settled down in what is now France (ever hear of Normandy) Their language was very Nordic, but, just like English, it had evolved into what is now called Middle French, not quite French but way not Swedish by-golly-you-becha. So they Normans invade England which is occupied by the Saxons who are displacing the romanized Celts. And Boom! we get Middle English. Not exactly French, not quite English, way not Latin, Celtic, or Swedish by-golly-you-betcha. After the wars die down and people go back to living the best that they can, weird things start happening. Ethnic and national pride start to surface and people want to go back to the old ways of talking, well almost. Vowels start to shift E's become A's, A's become O's. OO and OU and AU differentiate. Words just st
Member 3333482 wrote:
Japanese has four alphabets.
The Japanese languages doesn't utilize an alphabet. It utilizes three writing systems, of which two are phonetic syllabaries (native inventions) and one logographic (from Chinese).
My GUID: ca2262a7-0026-4830-a0b3-fe5d66c4eb1d :) Now I can Google this value and find all my Code Project posts!
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
if we did not do it that way we would pronounce the word "gaol" incorrectly.
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
Gene, gyrate, general, geography, geriatric, gist, etc. The letter 'j' didn't exist in English until something like 300 years ago. They made 'i' do double duty, e.g., 'iust' (just). There are some things about English spelling that could be cleaned up, but the general problem is that English is phonetically complex, so a comprehensive cleanup is impossible, and this discourages minor cleanups. For example, English has 50 different sounds, while Spanish has only 30, so English overloads the alphabet.
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So, how would you pronounce 'Featherstonhaugh'?
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Probably best you give it a pass then. It's as grueling as an upper level textbook.
The latest nation. Procrastination.
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
I'm guessing here, but I would conjecture that the soft pronunciation of an intervocal 'g' in words of Latin origin ('digit' cf 'rigid' and 'frigid') derives from the way classical Latin developed into and beyond the Middle Ages as a continuing spoken language and the lingua franca of Europe for business, the Church and the academic world. The 'i' following the 'g' is crucial: Latin developed into modern Italian with the practice of pronouncing a 'g' as 'hard' as in 'jug' when followed by 'a', 'o' and 'u', and soft as in 'digit' when followed by 'i' or 'e'.
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I refer the honourable gentleman to List_of_names_in_English_with_counterintuitive_pronunciations[^]. Unless there is an explanation there, I have no idea why, or how, it came to be spelled/pronounced that way. It is one of those that is well known to those that like these sorts of puzzles.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
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Why is "digit" spelled with a "g" and pronounced as "dijit"? I mean "g" has a different pronounciation (the one in "gun") in most of the words I know. While, "j" as pronounced in "jug" would fit better in word digit. Any English masters here who can explain?
It's not necessary to be so stupid, either, but people manage it. - Christian Graus, 2009 AD
How do you pronouce "ghoti" Answer: fish Enough - f sound Women - short i sound Nation - sh sound Go English. On a slightly more serious note the strange spellings and pronunciations and grammar comes from English being a peasant language that has been taking other languages into dark alleys for years and mugging them for words and sentence constructs.