It's really confusing when to be sure if the letter g is to be pronounced like giraffe or like girl. Both are followed by i. So how can we know the difference? On the other hand, we have gender and general. So is there a rule?
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the question is broad. there's no one rule you'll have to practise it by reading words that begin with 'g'.– Maulik VMar 11, 2014 at 9:12
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@MaulikV. As usual in English there are lots of exceptions, but there are some broad rules concerning the pronunciation of the letter g and the question is very interesting to deal with. A shame it should be closed.– NoneMar 11, 2014 at 10:44
1 Answer
There are two ways to pronounce the letter "g" at the beginning of a syllable.
The hard g /g/
is the most common pronunciation. It comes:
- before a consonant (great)
- before a back vowel (go, garden, get)
- before a front vowel in most words of Germanic origin (girl, gift,...)
- at the end of a word (frog)
The soft g /ʒ/
- It is extremely rare at the beginning of a syllable. The only words I can think of at the moment are
- genre [ʒɒnrə].
- bourgeois [ˈbʊəʒwɑː]
which are both loan words from French that have kept the French sound /ʒ/.
/ʒ/ is a little more common at the end of a word, but there again we only find it in loan words from French (rouge, garage)
/ʒ/ is more frequent in combination with /d/ in /dʒ/
It is the usual pronunciation if "g" is before the letters ‘e’, ‘i’ or ‘y’.- giraffe [dʒɪ'rɑːf]
- gin [dʒɪn]
This is only a general framework to start with and you will find exceptions of course. When you are not sure you can consult a dictionary, even online dictionary will give the IPA phonetic notation.
I've just found this online article Why are there two pronunciations for the letter 'G'? with a little humoristic touch on the pronunciation of GIF.
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3I think it's not very common to call /ʒ/ the "soft g" sound in English. Usually, that term would refer to the affricate [dʒ]. The sound /ʒ/ is only associated with "g" in recent loanwords. Maybe you could flip around the order in which you discuss those two sounds? Otherwise everything in this answer looks good to me.– sumelicAug 15, 2016 at 6:48
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@sumelic I don't quite understand what you are saying (I'm not a professional phonetician), do you mean you would not refer to the /ʒ/ sound (as in beige for example) as a "soft g", but you would not say it is pronounced with a "hard g", would you? I know there would be a lot more to say about the pronunciation of the letter "g" but I suppose at the time I wanted to give a quick answer before the close suggestion became effective. I went from the most common sound to the least common, why do you think would the reverse order would be better?– NoneAug 20, 2016 at 6:43
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Well, in English, the most common sound is /dʒ/ rather than /ʒ/. That's why I think it would make more sense to start with /dʒ/. I wouldn't say "beige" is pronounced with hard g, but it's not pronounced with a usual English soft g sound either. It's pronounced with a French soft g sound.– sumelicAug 20, 2016 at 6:53
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