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 feature is a concept applied to several fields of Linguistics, typically involving the assignment of Binary or Unary conditions which act as constraints A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU A hard g is typically (but not always) pronounced as a voiced plosive, while a soft g is frequently pronounced as a fricative or affricate. A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Affricate Consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or) but release as a fricative (such as or or occasionally into In the case of English, hard and soft g sounds are almost always represented by [g] (like in "gargle"), and usually represented by [ʤ] (like in "George"), respectively.

Contents 1 English 1.1 General overview 1.1.1 General rules/characteristics 1.1.2 g versus c; “neatness/intuitiveness” issues 1.1.3 Suffixation 1.2 ng, gg, and dg letter combinations 1.2.1 ng 1.2.2 gg 1.2.3 dg 1.3 Special cases 1.3.1 Silent marker letters 1.3.2 gh-, gm-, and gn-containing words 1.3.3 Omitted-e spellings 1.3.4 Other suffix additions 1.3.5 Pronunciation changes 1.4 Loanwords with exceptional pronunciation patterns 1.5 Alternative spelling in blogging, marketing, entertainment, etc. 2 Other languages 2.1 Latin alphabet–based languages 2.2 Non–Latin alphabet–based languages 3 History 4 See also 5 References

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), g is usually soft when it occurs immediately before the letters "e", "i" and "y", while the hard g occurs in other positions. The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly In words generally encountered that are of purely Germanic origin, g is usually hard. The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. 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. Middle English is the name given by Historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly (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. Phonology North American English regional phonology In many ways compared to English English, North American English is conservative in its Phonology. British English or UK English ( BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the )

g versus c; “neatness/intuitiveness” issues

English orthography presents many challenges due to its very irregular spelling pattern, despite many "general rules" that exist within English. English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. 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. C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (siː 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). The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all 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. Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550 Middle English is the name given by Historical linguistics to the diverse forms of the English language spoken between the Norman invasion of Middle French (le moyen français is a historical division of the French language which covers the period from (roughly 1340 to 1611. Old French was the Romance Dialect continuum spoken in territories which span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European (IE Language family. 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. For other uses see Anecdota. For a comparison of anecdote with other kinds of stories see Myth legend fairy tale and fable. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts The United States of America —commonly referred to as the A department store is a Retail establishment which specializes in selling a wide range of products without a single predominant merchandise line. Chain stores are Retail outlets that share a Brand and central management and usually have standardized business methods and practices Target Corporation ( is an American Retailing company that was founded in Minneapolis Minnesota in 1902 Due to its "cheap chic" merchandise selection, Target's name is sometimes sardonically or endearingly pronounced not as "TARG-itt" IPA: /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]. This is a list of notable chics. Art-school chic See Hippie chic Ashcan chic Term used in the United States c In Marketing, a product is anything that can be offered to a Market that might satisfy a want or need Sardonicism (connected with guffaw) characterizes —as distinct from Sarcasm — not a contumely or bitter but a ferocious painful derision )

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. C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (siː K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (keɪ Analogy is both the cognitive process of transferring Information from a particular subject (the analogue or source to another particular subject (the target and 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. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents Intuition is apparent ability to acquire knowledge without a clear inference or the use of reason 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. English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound The same vowel-preservation-message effect is also achieved by the doubled consonants as found in the suffixed forms spinning, crabby, clammy, and baggily. In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal [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. Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift, completed in roughly 1550 ] 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.

(The potential extent of the "neatness/intuitiveness" issue explicitly involving the use of gg is, however, heavily lessened due to the fact that in English, gg within words/names is usually pronounced /g/ wherever encountered. Exceptions to such pronunciation, such as in the word "suggest" or in the name "DiMaggio", are only modestly encountered in English-language communication. A little more regarding the gg letter combination is mentioned later in this article. )

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. Rote learning is a Learning technique which avoids understanding of a subject and instead focuses on memorization. Ough is a combination in the English language. In Middle English where the spelling arose it was probably pronounced with a back rounded vowel and a velar fricative 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. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word 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. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents Piggly Wiggly is a Supermarket chain operating in the Midwestern and Southern regions of the United States run by Piggly Wiggly Corporation In Grammar, a modifier (or qualifier) is a word or Sentence element that limits or qualifies another word a phrase or a clause Pigs, also called hogs or' swine', are Ungulates which have been domesticated as sources of food leather and similar products since ancient times In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the A nonce word is a Word used only "for the nonce "—to meet a need that is not expected to recur Reckless driving, in the United States, is a serious moving traffic violation. 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. In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that in a particular word does not correspond to any sound in the word's Pronunciation. Furthermore, in regards to pronunciation, the doubled g does not result in a geminated (that is, elongated) g sound (i. In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant. 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. Silent e is a writing convention in English Spelling. When reading the Silent letter e at the end of a Word signals In this situation, the e usually serves a marking function that helps to indicate that the g immediately before it is soft. English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. 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. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound When a vowel appears immediately before a "dge" combination, this vowel is typically short, as in bridge and fudge. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound )

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. Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of Imagery, and clear sharp language 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. Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world Grammatical person, in Linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event such as the speaker the Addressee, or others 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). A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been 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. American and British English spelling differences are one aspect of American and British English differences. A dictionary is a book of alphabetically listed Words in a specific language with definitions etymologies pronunciations and other information or a book of alphabetically A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for design and writing of documents either for general use or for a specific publication or organization

(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. Context is a notion used in the language sciences ( Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Discourse analysis, Pragmatics, Semiotics, etc 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 frequently 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"]. However, there are cases here in where the g is doubled when the suffix is added, although no letters are dropped [e. g. , "hug" + "-able" → "huggable"]. 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. Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a Vowel, a Consonant, or a whole Syllable) in a word or phrase producing a result that is easier 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. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly )

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. Ng (lowercase ng) is a digraph of the Latin alphabet. In English and several other European and English-derived orthographies it In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that in a particular word does not correspond to any sound in the word's Pronunciation. Within Phonetics, a phone is a speech sound or gesture considered a physical event without regard to its place in the Phonology of a Language It is represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ŋ/, and is described as a velar nasal sound. The velar nasal is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents 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). The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU

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. In Linguistics, a compound is a Lexeme (less precisely a Word) that consists of more than one stem. 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). Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are a group of aquatic, flightless Birds living almost Welsh ( cy Cymraeg or cy y Gymraeg, kəmˈrɑːɨɡ and {{IPA|[ə ɡəmˈrɑːɨɡ]}}, is a member of the Brythonic branch of Celtic Plumage refers both to the layer of Feathers that cover a Bird and the pattern colour and arrangement of those feathers 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. Assimilation is a common Phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary

(This just-mentioned linguistic phenomenon of anticipatory assimilation with "n + hard g" can also occur across adjacent word boundaries. For example, in the American historical phrase "As Maine goes, so goes the nation", the words "Maine goes", in careful speech, are pronounced "MAIN–goes", but in normal speech, are pronounced "MANG-goes" [that is, in this latter example, pronounced like the word mangoes]. A proverb (from the Latin proverbium) also called a byword or nayword, is a simple and concrete Saying popularly known and repeated " As Maine goes so goes the nation " is a phrase that at one time was in wide currency in United States politics. Mangoes belong to the genus Mangifera, consisting of numerous species of tropical fruiting Trees in the Flowering plant family Anacardiaceae In other words, the n essentially yields the /ŋ/ sound, but the g retains its normal hard sound, in this just-mentioned example involving normal speech. )

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. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents g. , the present participle of bring is bringing, and it is pronounced /ˈbrɪŋɪŋ/, not /ˈbrɪŋgɪŋ/). In Linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium, a Calque of Greek μετοχη "partaking" is a derivative of a non-finite (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/). In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that in a particular word does not correspond to any sound in the word's Pronunciation. It is not only found in aforementioned suffixed words such as bagged/bagginess, but in many others, including English proper names, such as in 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. In Linguistics, derivation is "Used to form new words as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from g. , /səgˈʤɛst/ — although the hard g may be dropped when pronouncing suggest and its derivatives due to elision, thus yielding /səˈʤɛst/, etc. Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a Vowel, a Consonant, or a whole Syllable) in a word or phrase producing a result that is easier ). 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 /diˈmaddʒo/. The word Anglosphere describes a concept of a group of Anglophone ( English -speaking nations which share historical political and cultural characteristics rooted SIGGRAPH (short for S pecial I nterest G roup on GRAPH ics and Interactive Techniques is the name of the annual conference on Computer graphics In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant. Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. (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. Anglo-Celtic is a macro-cultural term used to collectively describe the cultures native to the British Isles / Anglo-Celtic Isles and the significant Diasporas Examples include guess, guild, Guinness, and guy. A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade The earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers 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 tongue is the large bundle of Skeletal muscles on the floor of the Mouth that manipulates Food for chewing and swallowing (deglutition 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 word having no e]. Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation A segue is a smooth transition from one topic or section to the next )

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. Silent e is a writing convention in English Spelling. When reading the Silent letter e at the end of a Word signals 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. A ghetto is described as a "portion of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social legal or economic pressure Ghillie or gillie is a Scottish dialect term that refers to a man or a boy who acts as an attendant on a Fishing, Fly fishing A dinghy is a type of small Boat, often carried or towed by a larger vessel 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). The word Anglosphere describes a concept of a group of Anglophone ( English -speaking nations which share historical political and cultural characteristics rooted The Ghirardelli Chocolate Company is a United States division of Swiss candy-maker Lindt & Sprüngli.

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 an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that in a particular word does not correspond to any sound in the word's Pronunciation. (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. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents In Linguistics, a compound is a Lexeme (less precisely a Word) that consists of more than one stem. 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. A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech, writing or Paralinguistics. Slang is the use of highly informal Words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's Dialect or Language.

The letter combinations "ough" and "augh" present a particularly interesting phenomenon in English. Ough is a combination in the English language. In Middle English where the spelling arose it was probably pronounced with a back rounded vowel and a velar fricative 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 voiceless velar fricative, informally known as the hard ch, is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the 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. In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract 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. Australian English ( AuE, AusE, en-AU) is the form of the English language used in Australia. Received Pronunciation ( RP) is a form of Pronunciation of the English language (specifically British English) which has long been perceived as 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. Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation Lasagna (singular laˈzaɲa in Italian plural lasagne pronounced) is both a form of Pasta in sheets (sometimes rippled though seldom so in Northern French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people

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. GNU ( pronounced) is a computer Operating system composed entirely of Free software. Capital letters or majuscules pronunciation /məˈdʒʌskyuls ˈmædʒəˌskyuls/ in the Roman alphabet A, B, C, D, A recursive acronym (or occasionally recursive initialism, and sometimes recursive backronym) is an Abbreviation that refers to itself in the A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified The name is pronounced /ˈgnuː/ — most notably, with a non-silent, hard g. GNU's logo, not surprisingly, is a cartoonish gnu head. A logo ( Greek el λογότυπος = el-Latn logotypos is a graphical element ( Ideogram, Symbol, Emblem, Icon, Sign) The word cartoon has various meanings based on several very different forms of Visual art and Illustration. )

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. Phonology North American English regional phonology In many ways compared to English English, North American English is conservative in its Phonology. In non-legal contexts a judgment is a balanced weighing up of evidence preparatory to making a decision Abridgement or abridgment is a term defined as "shortening" or "condensing" and is most commonly used in reference to the act of reducing a written work In Linguistics, derivation is "Used to form new words as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from 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. British English or UK English ( BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the Analogy is both the cognitive process of transferring Information from a particular subject (the analogue or source to another particular subject (the target and

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. A trademark or trade mark, represented by the symbols ™ and ®, or mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual 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". In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal

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. Ageing or aging (American English is the accumulation of changes in an organism In Linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium, a Calque of Greek μετοχη "partaking" is a derivative of a non-finite Gerontology (from Greek γερο gero, "old age" and λόγος Logos, "speech" lit 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). Standard English (often shortened to SE within linguistic circles is a term generally applied to a form of the English language that is thought to be normative The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word

Other suffix additions

Infrequently, there will be a root word ending in a double g — most commonly, the word egg — with the double g pronounced as /g/. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents When adding the aforementioned suffixes mentioned in the "General overview" section to such words, no letters are dropped, and the sound of the root word is preserved, such as in egging and eggish. In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word (For suffixed neologisms whose root ends in gg, however, there may be acceptable alternative spellings which make use of, for example, dropped letters plus an added apostrophe; check with an appropriate style guide or other acceptable source if there are questions in regards to such spellings. A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been ) The word renege is notable for having an "irregular" hard-g sound before the terminal e in this word (although the terminal e in renege is, in typical fashion for ge-ending words, silent). This word can be pronounced several ways: "rin-NEGG", "rin-NAYGG", "rin-NIGG", "ree-NEGG", "ree-NAYGG", and "ree-NIGG". The derivatives reneged, reneging, and reneges are formed by adding "-d", "-ing", and "-s", respectively, and the entire set of sounds of the root word "renege" are preserved within these derivatives. (As with the word manage, with its "regular" soft g before the terminal silent e — and which has the derivatives managed, managing and manages — we don't add an e [within the added suffix] to the past tense and plural/third-person-singular forms of renege, either. Silent e is a writing convention in English Spelling. When reading the Silent letter e at the end of a Word signals The past tense is a Verb tense expressing action activity state or being in the past of the current moment (in an Absolute tense system or prior Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world Grammatical person, in Linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event such as the speaker the Addressee, or others )

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. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound A monophthong ( Greek μονόφθογγος "monophthongos" = single note) is a "pure" Vowel sound one whose articulation at 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"). A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been Moog Music 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. A hyphen ( -) is a Punctuation mark It is used for both Words to join and to separate Syllables It is often confused with the dashes 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. A dictionary is a book of alphabetically listed Words in a specific language with definitions etymologies pronunciations and other information or a book of alphabetically (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 in all these derivatives, but the "/ŋg/" sound pair (represented by the ng letter combination in all these words, including the root words) is maintained in these just-mentioned particular derivatives of anger and hunger. In Linguistics, derivation is "Used to form new words as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the In Grammar, the comparative is the form of an Adjective or Adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person thing or other entity has a property In Grammar the superlative of an Adjective or Adverb is the greatest form of adjective or adverb which indicates that something has some feature

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. In Grammar, a modifier (or qualifier) is a word or Sentence element that limits or qualifies another word a phrase or a clause 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. A hyphen ( -) is a Punctuation mark It is used for both Words to join and to separate Syllables It is often confused with the dashes e. , rog-ed) may be easiest for the sake of the reader if a word is a protologism. A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been (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 arguably may be 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. Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper )

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. A hard c vs a soft c is a feature that occurs in many Languages including English, in which two

Finally, a few further notable spelling exceptions to the typical suffix-addition rules will be given for words which are found in Standard English. Standard English (often shortened to SE within linguistic circles is a term generally applied to a form of the English language that is thought to be normative 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). In Linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium, a Calque of Greek μετοχη "partaking" is a derivative of a non-finite 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. An orange —specifically the sweet orange —is the Citrus fruit Citrus sinensis ( syn The colour orange occurs The Orange Institution, more commonly known as the Orange Order or the Orange Lodge, is a Protestant fraternal organisation based predominantly The House of Orange-Nassau (in Dutch: Huis van Oranje-Nassau) a branch of the German House of Nassau, has played a central role in the political life (Orangey, spelled with an e, was also the name of a red tabby cat who was a talented animal actor in film and television. Orangey, a red Tabby Cat, was a talented animal actor owned and trained by the well-known cinematic animal handler Frank Inn. Red is any of a number of similar Colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of Light discernible by the human eye in the wavelength ATTENTION *** This article should not become a gallery of people's cat photos There are many appearances and depictions of animals on television, ranging from the use of Working animals as Actors to Anthropomorphism. Television ( TV) is a widely used Telecommunication medium for sending ( Broadcasting) and receiving moving Images, either monochromatic ) 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). In Linguistics, derivation is "Used to form new words as with happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from 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. A prefix is a type of Affix attached to a stem which modifies the meaning of that stem In Linguistics ( Articulatory phonetics) manner of articulation describes how the tongue lips and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make 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. Assimilation is a common Phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary

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/]. Pejorative usage Slurs are used to refer to members of a given sexual Minority, Gender, Sex, or Sexual orientation in a Slang is the use of highly informal Words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's Dialect or Language. An idiom is a Phrase whose meaning cannot be deduced from the literal Definition, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only ) And, in a similar phonetic spirit to ragged, the word jagged, if meaning "unevenly cut" or "having a tactically or visually rough quality," is thusly pronounced with two syllables: /ˈʤægɪd/. However, if jagged is used as the past tense or past participle of "to jag", it is pronounced with one syllable: /ʤægd/. The past tense is a Verb tense expressing action activity state or being in the past of the current moment (in an Absolute tense system or prior In Linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium, a Calque of Greek μετοχη "partaking" is a derivative of a non-finite

And finally, 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. )

Loanwords with exceptional pronunciation patterns

In some French loanwords in English, such as genre, mirage and sabotage, their soft-g sound is, instead, a "zh" sound (i. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one Language from another with little or no translation 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. Analogy is both the cognitive process of transferring Information from a particular subject (the analogue or source to another particular subject (the target and 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. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities or are traditional female Japanese Entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance Polish ( język polski, polszczyzna) is the Official language of Poland. Pierogi (also perogi, perogy, pirohi, piroghi, pirogi, pirogen, pierogy, pidahih,--> or Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Gynecomastia, or gynaecomastia, ˌgaɪnəkoʊˈmæstiə is the development of abnormally large Mammary glands in Males resulting in breast enlargement which (The three loanwords just given do all feature hard g's. ) 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. Gynaecology or gynecology (see spelling differences) refers to the surgical specialty dealing with health of the female reproductive system ( Uterus 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 what could be viewed as a modified form of a soft g (that is, having the "y" sound of "yet"). This article is about the food dish For other uses see Gyro. Gyros or gyro (giros (ˈjɪəroʊ or /ˈdʒaɪroʊ/ Greek: γύρος A sandwich is a food item made of two or more slices of Bread with one or more layers of a filling Gyros used as an abbreviation for gyroscopes begins with, however, a "standard" soft-g (/ʤ/) sound (and is pronounced as rhyming with "high rose"). A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of Angular momentum.

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. Blogosphere is a collective term encompassing all Blogs and their interconnections 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 Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the Bling-bling (or simply bling) is a Slang term in Hip hop culture referring to flashy or elaborate Jewelry and ornamented Jewellery (also spelled jewelry, see spelling differences) is a personal Ornament, such as a necklace ring or bracelet made from Gemstones Hip-hop fashion is a distinctive style of dress originating with African-American youth in The Bronx ( New York City) and later influenced by The term lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929 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. In popular usage "marketing" is the promotion of products especially Advertising and Branding However in professional usage the term has a wider meaning of The roots of the Mirro Aluminum Company, commonly known as Mirro can be traced to the 1885 founding of the Aluminum Manufacturing Company by Joseph Koenig in Two Rivers Wisconsin Cooking is the process of preparing Food by applying Heat, selecting measuring and combining of ingredients in an ordered procedure for producing safe and edible Refrigerator1svg|left|100px]]A major appliance, or domestic appliance, is usually defined as a large Machine which accomplishes some routine housekeeping task which An egg is a round or oval body laid by the female of many animals consisting of an Ovum surrounded by layers of Membranes and an outer casing which acts to nourish An omelette is a preparation of beaten egg cooked with Butter or oil in a Frying pan, usually folded around a filling such as These spelling conventions (i. e. , the added hyphen and "h" in the former examples; the "-ory" instead of "-ery" in the latter example) help clue the reader (especially with the former examples) to not pronounce the g's in these words as soft (i. A hyphen ( -) is a Punctuation mark It is used for both Words to join and to separate Syllables It is often confused with the dashes e. , that the ng is pronounced as /ŋ/ in the former examples, and that the gg is pronounced as /g/ in the latter example) — as well as also aid in deciphering word meanings.

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. J is the tenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added The Commonwealth of Massachusetts ( is a state located in the New England region of the northeastern United States. A division of a business entity is a portion of that business that operates under a different name M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em (ɛm In Broadcasting and Radio communications a call sign (also known as a callsign or call letters, or abbreviated as a call, or otherwise A moniker (or " monicker " is a Slang expression for a Nickname, Pseudonym, or Cognomen. g. , the FM stations WMJI "Majic 105. WMJI is an American commercial FM Radio station in Cleveland, Ohio broadcasting at 105 7" in Cleveland, Ohio; WMXJ "Majic 102. Cleveland is a City in the US state of Ohio and the County seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state WMXJ (1027 FM, "Majic 1027" is an Oldies music formatted Radio station that broadcasts from Miami Gardens Florida. 7" in Miami, Florida; and CJMJ "Majic 100" in Ottawa, Ontario). CJMJ is a Canadian radio station which airs an Adult contemporary format at 100 Ottawa (ˈɒtəwə or sometimes /ˈɒtəwɑː/ is the Capital of Canada and the country's fourth largest municipality.

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. The word Anglosphere describes a concept of a group of Anglophone ( English -speaking nations which share historical political and cultural characteristics rooted 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. The 1980s was the decade spanning from January 1 1980 to December 31 1989. Television comedy had a presence from the earliest days of broadcasting Not Necessarily the News was a satirical sketch comedy series that ran on HBO from 1983 to 1990 Premium television (sometimes Pay television in North America) generally refers to a class of commercial-free Television services which A television network is a distribution network for Television content whereby a central operation provides programming for many Television stations Recitation means a repetition of what has been said before It is used in a religious an oratorical and an educational sense A sniglet is a Neologism defined as "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary but should" A dictionary is a book of alphabetically listed Words in a specific language with definitions etymologies pronunciations and other information or a book of alphabetically (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". The windshield or windscreen of an Aircraft, Automobile, Bus, Motorcycle, or Tram is the front Window A windscreen wiper ( windshield wiper in North America) is a device used to wipe Rain and dirt from a Windscreen.

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". New Wave is a Rock music genre that existed during the late 1970s and the 1980s Devo (pronounced DEE-vo (IPA /'diːvoʊ/) or dee-VO (IPA /diː'voʊ/) often spelled "DEVO" or "DEV-O" is an American Booji Boy is a character created in the early 1970s by American New Wave band Devo. 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. Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and Performing arts In satire human See " Infantilism " for other uses of the term Paraphilic infantilism is a Paraphilia characterized by the desire to wear Decline is a change over time from previously efficient to inefficient organizational functioning from previously rational to non-rational organizational and individual decision-making Western culture (sometimes equated with Western Civilization) are terms which are used to refer to Cultures of European origin Letraset is a company which manufactures sheets of artwork elements which can be transferred to artwork being prepared see the article on Screentone for details

Other languages

Latin alphabet–based languages

All modern Romance languages make this distinction, except a few that have undergone spelling reforms such as Ladino or Haitian Creole. The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all Haitian Creole language ( kreyòl ayisyen) often called simply Creole or Kreyòl ( pronounced) is a language spoken in Haiti 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. Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. Romanian or Daco-Romanian ( dated: Rumanian or Roumanian; self designation limba română, ˈlimba roˈmɨnə is a Romance French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Catalan ˈkætəˌlæn ( català kətəˈla or) is a Romance language, the national and official language of Andorra, and a co-official In Phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds ( Phones that belong to the same Phoneme. 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. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU 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. Norwegian ( norsk) is a North Germanic Language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language Nynorsk (literally "New Norwegian" is one of the two official Norwegian Standard languages the other being Bokmål. Bokmål (lit "book language" or Dano-Norwegian is the most commonly used of the two official Norwegian written Standard languages the other A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος dialektos) is a variety of a Language that is characteristic of a particular group of In Swedish, g is "hard" before before a consonant or a hard vowel ("a", "o", "u", "å"), where it has the /g/ sound. Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract 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". Icelandic ( is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. The voiceless palatal plosive is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that 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 Linguistics ( Articulatory phonetics) manner of articulation describes how the tongue lips and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make

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. Danish ( d̥ænsɡ̊ is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that in a particular word does not correspond to any sound in the word's Pronunciation. 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. Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname In some Dutch dialects, however, g is pronounced as /ɣ/. But, in some loanwords such as goal and bagage ("baggage"), the initial g in the former loanword goal is typically pronounced as /g/, and the second g of bagage is commonly pronounced /zʲ/ (but pronounced /sʲ/ instead of /zʲ/ in some dialects). However, some Dutch speakers do use the French soft-g sound of /ʒ/ in loanwords such as bagage (for the second g in this particular example; the first g of bagage is commonly pronounced as /x/, however).

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/. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. 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). Furthermore and relatedly, in a few English loanwords such as Manager (/ˈmɛnɪdʒɐ/) and Teenager (/ˈtiːnˌeɪdʒɚ/), g has the English soft-g /ʤ/ sound. The /ʤ/ sound is occasionally indicated in German by use of the "dsch" letter combination, such as in the word Dschungel /ˈdʒʊŋl̩/, the German word for "jungle" (and which is pronounced fairly similarly to its English cognate). Cognates in Linguistics are words that have a common origin They may occur within a language such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from

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). Luganda, sometimes known as Ganda, is a major language of Uganda, spoken by over three million people mainly in the Buganda region which includes The letter y in Luganda is a consonant representing the semivowel /j/, and is always followed by a vowel. In Articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a Speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the upper Vocal tract, the upper vocal Semivowels — also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels —are Vowels that form Diphthongs with full syllabic vowels In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract However, in the combination "gy", the y is silent; it softens the g and lengthens the following vowel, but is not itself pronounced. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound 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. The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages, or Neolatin languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. 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.

Non–Latin alphabet–based languages

In Modern Greek, which uses the Greek alphabet, the Greek letter gamma (uppercase: “Γ”; lowercase: “γ”) — which is ancestral to the Roman letters ‘’g’’ and ‘’c’’ — has “soft-type” and “hard-type” variants. Modern Greek (el Νέα Ελληνικά or el Νεοελληνική lit The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early Gamma (uppercase &Gamma, lowercase γ Γάμμα is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. Capital letters or majuscules pronunciation /məˈdʒʌskyuls ˈmædʒəˌskyuls/ in the Roman alphabet A, B, C, D, Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper Gamma is “soft” — pronounced as the voiced palatal fricative /ʝ/ — before “αι” and “ε” (both typically pronounced /ɛ/), and before “ει”, “η”, “ι”, “οι”, and “υι” (all typically pronounced /i/). The voiced palatal fricative is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet In other instances, gamma is “hard” and has the sound of /ɣ/ (the voiced counterpart to the “ch” in the Scottish pronunciation of “loch”). Scottish Gaelic ( Gàidhlig) is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages.

In Russian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet, the letter “г” (Ge; pronounced /ge/; has similar uppercase and lowercase forms except for italicized forms, and is also derived from Greek gamma) has hard (твёрдый /ˈtvʲo. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by Ge or He (Г г italics Г, г) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing /g/ or /ɦ/ in different languages In Typography, italic type /ɪˈtælɪk/ or /aɪˈtælɪk/ refers to cursive Typefaces based on a stylized form of calligraphic Handwriting. rdɨj/) and soft (мягкий /ˈmʲæ. xʲkʲɪj/), or plain and palatalized, variants. Palatalization or palatalisation (ˌpælətəlɨˈzeɪʃən generally refers to two phenomena As a process or the result of a process They are pronounced /g/ and /gʲ/, respectively. The soft pronunciation of г occurs always before the vowels “я” (/ ʲa/ or /ja/); “ё” (/ ʲo/ or /jo/); “и” (/ ʲi/); and “ю” (/ ʲu/ or /ju/), which are then pronounced as standard uniotated “а” /a/, “о” /o/, “и” /i/, and “у” /u/. Iotation is a form of Palatalization which occurs in Slavic languages. Also, the soft pronunciation occurs almost always before the vowel “е” (/ ʲe/ or /je/), which is then pronounced as “э” (/e/ or /ɛ/). Another way the soft pronunciation occurs is if г is followed by the soft sign “ь”. The soft sign (Ь ь is a symbol in the Cyrillic alphabet. In the Old Slavic language, it represented a short -like vowel but in modern Slavic Cyrillic writing

(Russian г becomes a devoiced consonant at the end of words — leniting to a pronunciation of /x/ — unless the next word begins with a voiced obstruent. In Linguistics ( Articulatory phonetics) manner of articulation describes how the tongue lips and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change In Phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes obstruents and Sonorants An obstruent is a Consonant sound formed by Orthographic г also represents /x/ when it precedes other velar sounds. It can also be noted that г represents the sound /v/ in the genitive case [and also in the accusative for animate entities] of masculine singular adjectives and pronouns [i. In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another The accusative case ( abbreviated ACC) of a Noun is the Grammatical case used to mark the Direct object of a Transitive SINGULAR is a Computer algebra system for Polynomial computations with special emphasis on the needs of Commutative algebra, Algebraic geometry In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or e. , его /jɪˈvo/ (“his/him”); белого /ˈbʲɛ. lə. və/ (“white” gen. sg. ); синего /ˈsʲi. nʲɪ. və/ (“blue” gen. sg. )]. In southwestern Russia, orthographic г becomes a fricative /ɣ/, and sometimes becomes the voiced glottal fricative /ɦ/ in regions bordering Belarus and Ukraine. Russia (Россия Rossiya) or the Russian Federation ( Rossiyskaya Federatsiya) is a transcontinental Country extending Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together The breathy-voiced glottal transition, commonly called a voiced glottal fricative, is a type of sound used in some spoken Languages which often behaves like Belarus ( Belarusian Беларусь / Biełaruś is a Landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east Ukraine (Україна Ukrayina, /ukrɑˈjinɑ/ is a country in Eastern Europe. Many other Russian [Cyrillic] consonantal letters also have soft and hard variants, although the phonological behavior of г is modestly more complex than that of several of these other consonants; see Russian phonology for more on this topic. See also Russian language For assistance in making phonetic transcriptions of Russian for Wikipedia articles see HelpIPA for Russian This article discusses )

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. The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי alephbet ’ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. Gimmel redirects here for the musical group see Gimmel (music group. Sephardi Hebrew is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jewish practice The dagesh (דָּגֵשׁ is a Diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. 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. Geresh (" ׳ " Hebrew: גֵרֵשׁ or medieval) is a sign in Hebrew writing e. , "ג׳") to indicate that the gimel is to be pronounced like the English "j"/English soft-g sound (that is, as /ʤ/).

History

The soft g first appeared in Late Latin, by palatalization. Vulgar Latin (in Latin sermo vulgaris, "folk speech" is a Blanket term covering the popular Dialects and Sociolects of the Latin Palatalization or palatalisation (ˌpælətəlɨˈzeɪʃən generally refers to two phenomena As a process or the result of a process 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]. In Linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a Phoneme or Morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization Vulgar Latin (in Latin sermo vulgaris, "folk speech" is a Blanket term covering the popular Dialects and Sociolects of the Latin A front vowel is a type of Vowel sound used in some spoken Languages The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward Later, other languages not descended from Latin, such as English, inherited this feature as an orthographic convention. In Historical linguistics, a daughter language is a Language descended from another language through a process of genetic descent The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language A convention is a set of agreed, stipulated or generally accepted Standards norms social norms or criteria, often taking the form of

See also

• English orthography
• G
• Hard and soft C

References

English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː A hard c vs a soft c is a feature that occurs in many Languages including English, in which two

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