Hard and soft G

In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages (including English), a distinction between hard and soft ⟨g⟩ occurs in which ⟨g⟩ represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard ⟨g⟩ (which often precedes the non-front vowels ⟨a o u⟩) is usually [ɡ] (as in gangrene or golf) while the sound of a soft ⟨g⟩ (typically before ⟨i e y⟩), depending on language, may be a fricative or affricate. In English, the sound of soft ⟨g⟩ is /dʒ/ (as in Genesis, giraffe, and gymnasium).

History

This alternation has its origins in a historical palatalization of /ɡ/ which took place in Late Latin, and led to a change in the pronunciation of the sound [ɡ] before the front vowels [e] and [i]. Later, other languages not descended from Latin, such as English, inherited this feature as an orthographic convention. The Scandinavian languages, however, have undergone their shift independently.

English

In English orthography, the pronunciation of hard ⟨g⟩ is /ɡ/ and that of soft ⟨g⟩ is /dʒ/; in a number of French loanwords, such as rouge and genre, soft ⟨g⟩ is /ʒ/. In word roots of Greco-Latinate origin, the soft ⟨g⟩ pronunciation occurs before ⟨i e y⟩ while the hard ⟨g⟩ pronunciation occurs elsewhere. In words of Germanic origin, and loans from other sources, the hard pronunciation may occur before ⟨i e y⟩ as well (as in get and gill).

Digraphs and trigraphs, such as ⟨ng⟩, ⟨gg⟩, and ⟨dge⟩, have their own pronunciation rules.

Notable exceptions include words such as algae; the digraphs ae and oe often trigger the soft pronunciation, as if they were merely e. Other notable irregularities include margarine (despite the name Margaret having a hard g) and mortgagor, pronounced with a soft ⟨g⟩; gaol and gaoler, alternative spellings of jail and jailer; 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.

While ⟨c⟩, which also has hard and soft pronunciations, exists alongside ⟨k⟩ (which always indicates a hard pronunciation), ⟨g⟩ has no analogous letter or letter combination which consistently indicates a hard ⟨g⟩ sound, even though English uses ⟨j⟩ consistently for the soft ⟨g⟩ sound (the rationale for the spelling change of "gaol" to "jail" in American English). This leads to special issues regarding the "neatness" of orthography when suffixes are added to words that end in a hard-⟨g⟩ sound.

Suffixation

When suffixes are added to words ending with a hard or soft ⟨g⟩ (such as -ed, -ing, -er, -est, -ism, -ist, -edness, -ish(ness), -ily, -iness, -ier, -iest, -ingly, -edly, and -ishly), the sound is normally maintained. Sometimes the normal rules of spelling changes before suffixes can help signal whether the hard of soft sound is intended. For example, as an accidental byproduct of the rule that doubles consonants in this situation after a short vowel, a double ⟨gg⟩ will normally indicate the hard pronunciation (e.g. bagged is pronounced /ˈbæɡd/, not as /ˈbædʒd/).

There are occasional exceptions where alternations between the hard and soft sound occur before different suffixes. Examples are analogous (hard) vs. analogy (soft); similarly, prodigal with prodigy. These are generally cases where the entire word, including the suffix, has been imported from Latin, and the general Romance-language pattern of soft ⟨g⟩ before front vowels, but hard ⟨g⟩ otherwise, is preserved.

Sometimes a silent letter is added to help indicate pronunciation. For example, a silent ⟨e⟩ usually indicates the soft pronunciation, as in change; this may be maintained before a suffix to indicate this pronunciation (as in changeable), despite the rule that usually drops this letter. A silent ⟨i⟩ can also indicate a soft pronunciation, particularly with the suffixes -gion and -gious (as in region, contagious). A silent ⟨u⟩ can indicate a hard pronunciation in words borrowed from French (as in analogue, league, guide) or words influenced by French spelling conventions (guess, guest); a silent ⟨h⟩ serves a similar purpose in Italian-derived words (ghetto, spaghetti) or in a few other words (ghost, ghoul (though the latter derives from Arabic/Persian غول, in which "gh" originally represented the phoneme غ /ɣ/ and not /g/)).

A silent ⟨e⟩ can occur at the end of a word – or at the end of a component root word that is part of a larger word – after ⟨g⟩ as well as word-internally. In this situation, the ⟨e⟩ usually serves a marking function that helps to indicate that the ⟨g⟩ immediately before it is soft. Examples include image, management, and pigeon. Such a silent ⟨e⟩ also indicates that the vowel before ⟨g⟩ is a historic long vowel, as in rage, oblige, and range. When adding one of the above suffixes, this silent ⟨e⟩ is often dropped and the soft pronunciation remains. While ⟨dge⟩ commonly indicates a soft pronunciation, American spelling conventions drop the silent ⟨e⟩ in a number of words like judgment and abridgment while retaining the soft pronunciation. Also, the word veg, which results from a clipping of vegetate, retains the soft pronunciation despite being spelled without a silent ⟨e⟩ (i.e., pronounced as if spelled vedge). Similarly, soft ⟨g⟩ is sometimes replaced by ⟨j⟩ in some names of commercial entities, such as with Enerjy Software, or "Majic 105.7" in Cleveland, Ohio and some names commonly spelled with ⟨j⟩ are given unusual soft ⟨g⟩ spellings such as Genna and Gennifer.

Letter combinations

A number of two-letter combinations or digraphs follow their own pronunciation patterns and, as such, may not follow the hard/soft distinction of ⟨g⟩. For example, ⟨ng⟩ often represents /ŋ/ (as in ring), /ŋɡ/ as in finger. The letters ⟨nge⟩, when final, represent /ndʒ/, as in orange; when not final their pronunciation varies according to the word's etymology (e.g. /ndʒ/ in danger, /ŋg/ in anger, /ŋ/ in banger). Normally, ⟨gg⟩ represents /ɡ/ as in dagger, but it may also represent /dʒ/ or /ɡdʒ/ as in suggest and exaggerate. Other letter combinations that don't follow the paradigm include ⟨gh⟩, ⟨gn⟩, and ⟨gm⟩.

In a few English words (including some Anglo-Celtic proper nouns), the digraph ⟨gu⟩ is used to indicate a hard ⟨g⟩ pronunciation before ⟨i e y⟩ (e.g. guess, guild, Guinness), including when ⟨e⟩ is silent (rogue, intrigue, and, in Commonwealth spelling, catalogue and analogue) even if there are some exceptions in which the digraph doesn't subsist such as distinguish or penguin. In loanwords from non-Romance languages, such as the Japanese loanword geisha, the Polish loanword pierogi, and the largely Greek-derived gynecomastia, the ⟨g⟩ is frequently hard, even before ⟨e i y⟩.

Other languages

Latin script

All modern Romance languages make the hard/soft distinction with ⟨g⟩, except a few that have undergone spelling reforms such as Ladino or Haitian Creole. The hard ⟨g⟩ is [ɡ] in almost all these languages (with the exception of Galician, which may instead be a voiceless pharyngeal fricative), though the soft ⟨g⟩ pronunciation, which occurs before ⟨i e y⟩, differs amongst them as follows:

• [d͡ʒ] in Italian and Romanian
• [ʒ] in French and Portuguese
• [(d)ʒ] in Catalan
• [x] in Spanish

Different languages use different strategies to indicate a hard pronunciation before front vowels:

• Italian and Romanian writing systems use ⟨gh⟩ (e.g. Italian laghi, Romanian ghid),
• French, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese orthographies use a silent ⟨u⟩ (e.g. French guerre, Catalan guerra, Spanish guitarra, Portuguese guitarra); a trema over ⟨u⟩ is used in a all of these languages to indicate that it is not silent (e.g. Spanish vergüenza is pronounced [bergwenθa], with both a hard ⟨g⟩ and non-mute ⟨u⟩).

A soft pronunciation before non-front vowels is usually indicated by a silent ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ (e.g. Italian giorno, French mangeons), though Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan use ⟨j⟩ as in jueves.

Several Nordic languages also make a hard/soft distinction. Again, the hard ⟨g⟩ is [ɡ] in most of these languages, but the soft ⟨g⟩ differs as follows:

• [j] in Swedish before ⟨e i y ä ö⟩
• [j] in Norwegian before ⟨i y⟩
• [t͡ʃ] in Faroese before ⟨e i y ey⟩, but not before ⟨ei⟩

Icelandic orthography is a bit more complicated by having lenited pronunciations of ⟨g⟩.

Other languages typically have hard ⟨g⟩ pronunciations except possibly in loanwords where it may represent [ʒ] or [dʒ].

The orthography of Ganda is similar to Italian in having a soft ⟨g⟩ pronunciation before front vowels (namely ⟨i y⟩) and ⟨gy⟩ indicates this soft pronunciation.

Because Esperanto orthography is phonemic, ⟨g⟩ always represents a hard g; a soft g is represented by the accented letter ⟨ĝ⟩

Other scripts

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" pronunciations, though Greek speakers do not use such a terminology. The "soft" pronunciation (that is, the voiced palatal fricative [ʝ]) occurs before ⟨αι⟩ and ⟨ε⟩ (both which represent [e]), and before ⟨ει⟩, ⟨η⟩, ⟨ι⟩, ⟨οι⟩, and ⟨υι⟩ (which all represent [i]). In other instances, the "hard" pronunciation (that is, the voiced velar fricative [ɣ]) occurs.

In the Russian alphabet (a variant of Cyrillic), ⟨г⟩ represents both hard (твёрдый [ˈtvʲo.rdɨj]) and soft (мягкий [ˈmʲæ.xʲkʲɪj]) pronunciations, [ɡ] and [ɡʲ], respectively. The soft pronunciation of ⟨г⟩ occurs before any of the "softening" vowels ⟨е ё и ю я ь⟩ and the hard pronunciation occurs elsewhere.

In Modern Hebrew, which uses the Hebrew alphabet, the letter gimel (⟨ג⟩) typically has the [ɡ] sound within Hebrew words, although in some Sephardic dialects, it represents [ɡ] or [dʒ] when written with a dagesh (i.e., a dot placed inside the letter: ⟨גּ⟩), and [ɣ] when without a dagesh. An apostrophe-like symbol called a Geresh can be added immediately to the left of a gimel (i.e., ⟨ג׳⟩) to indicate that the gimel represents an affricate /d͡ʒ/).

See also

• English orthography
• G
• Hard and soft C
• Hard and soft G in Dutch