"Yulius Kaisar"* would definitely have used two hard g's to pronounce
giga, according to the classical Latin courses I took in high school.
We were told that "Church Latin" actually arose in medieaval times and
was a link in the evolution of Italian. And our teacher was Jewish so
she had no particular axe to grind (use a hard g in grind, please).
Jim
* Caesar is the root word for kaiser and also for czar (tsar).
On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, Joseph B. Reid wrote:
> Robert Bushnell wrote in 11369:
>
> >?? Older grammar books say the possessive is always 's which I prefer.
> >We can say
> > "Let us go to Bill Potts' house and argue the pronunciation of giga."
> >or we can say
> > "Let us go to Bill Potts's house and argue the pronunciation of giga."
> > PS I go for the soft g (as in giant) for the first g in giga.
>
>
>
> This set me to my dictionaries. Giga comes from Greek. In Greek all
> letters have a unique sound, and in the case of gamma that sound is a hard
> g. By the time giga got into the Italian language that first g was
> certainly soft, like j. My Latin dictionary does not give pronunciations,
> probably because they are controverisial. The Roman Catholic church uses
> Italian pronunciation of Latin. However, linguists in this century have
> contended that Caesar should be pronounced not as "seeser" but as German
> "kaisar".
>
> Hence I vote for giga with hard g's.
>
> Joseph B. Reid
> 17 Glebe Road West
> Toronto M5P 1C8 Tel. 416 486-6071
--
James R. Frysinger University/College of Charleston
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