Appendix talk:English words where G is pronounced exceptionally

"gif" should not be listed as an exception to the rule. It's pronunciation is predominantly with a soft G, with a hard G being an acceptable alternative.
 * Please cite your sources. - TheDaveRoss 15:45, 2 May 2017 (UTC)


 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_G
 * "The orthography of soft ⟨g⟩ is fairly consistent: a soft ⟨g⟩ is almost always followed by ⟨e i y⟩."


 * In my experience hard-G "GIF" is far more common; a few older techie purists insist on the "jif" sound but they are a minority. It's a bit like hacker vs. cracker. Equinox ◑ 15:49, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
 * This is not what this page is intended for. This page lists words where "g" is or can be pronounced other than [dʒ]. This does not exclude words with several possible pronunciations. Bu193 (talk) 15:50, 2 May 2017 (UTC)


 * There is no reason to pronounce 'Gif' with a hard G. There are two ways to pronounce G. Hard and soft. There are two types of vowels, front and back, with some subtypes. A hard G is used in front of front vowels such as A, O, and U. A soft G is used in front of back vowels such as I, E, and Y. Secondly, acronyms are treated as their own new words, and are not pronounced based on the words that make them up. Take SCUBA, for example, which stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. That is a short U in underwater, but it is not pronounced like 'scubba'. There are exceptions to the G rule, such as girl, gear, give, etc. There are about 19,500 words in the English language that begin with a G, out of 1 million. This Wikipedia article lists all 61 of the words where a hard G is used instead of a soft G. Let's even round that 61 up to 100. 100 out of 19,500 is 0.5%. The general G rule is followed 99.5% of the time. Not even considering how the creator pronounces it, it should be pronounced with a soft G because it is a newly created word, and we should be following the general grammar rule of the English language. - Aidengrimsey 10:43, 27 May 2019 (EST)


 * Language isn't based on logic. You can argue until you are blue in the face, but that won't affect how real human beings really pronounce the word in the real world. So we document that. We are descriptivist not prescriptivist. Equinox ◑ 15:13, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

On the topic of GIF, I would just change the wording. "by one pronunciation" seems to imply that it's not the main, or proper pronunciation. Since this is debatable a more proper wording would be something like: "one of the two possible pronunciations", or to add a bit of flame to the fire: "by it's most popular pronunciation" which is a statement of fact. Also to show proper appreciation for the debate it would serve us well to add an article like this as an additional source: https://www.newsweek.com/100-percent-wrong-pronunciation-gif-483374 (Newbardo (talk) 04:43, 19 June 2021 (UTC))

Can someone edit this?
Gewgaw is listed twice 75ki5j (talk) 01:40, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

And add get to the list 75ki5j (talk) 01:42, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I’ve removed the second gewgaw. Get was already there. — Ungoliant (falai) 01:57, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Words in which G is pronounced as French G (i.e. voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ])
In English most words of French origin with soft "g" became pronounced [dʒ] (i.e. exactly like "j" in the word "jam"). However, there are some words of French origin which retain the original French pronunciation [ʒ] (i.e. like "s" in the word "vision"). For example, rouge, beige etc.

Should we add these words to this List of English words where G is pronounced exceptionally?Ufim (talk) 19:07, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I thought a little more and added some. I am sure there are more such words.Ufim (talk) 19:42, 10 October 2022 (UTC)