Ah, yes. Good old American stupidity and International wisdom. Someone really should have told the Portuguese. In Portuguese, a "g" is hard if followed by a, o, or u, and soft if followed by i, or e. The letter "c" follows similar rules unless the c is marked by a cedilla, then soft. I believe Spanish and Italian are similar although I don't speak them. I admit from their spelling, I never know how the French will pronounce anything. I think in German, the g would be hard in any case; however, Wikipedia (not always right) describes giga- as having a Greek root.
--- On Thu, 7/16/09, Stan Jakuba <[email protected]> wrote: From: Stan Jakuba <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:45404] Re: Brevity To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Cc: "USMA" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, July 16, 2009, 8:04 PM Bill: In the typical U.S. manner, ignorant of the non-AngloSaxon cultures, the proponents of metrication in the 1970s debated how to pronounce giga (yes!). The enlightened among the proponents realized that the word outside the A-S sphere pronounces most letters, or their standardized combination (French, German), always the same. Many languages are outright phonetic, meaning that each letter has the same pronunciation in all situations and often even its name is simply the sound it represents. Thus worldwide, the sameness of the two g g was established from inception, generations before the US started to reinvent the wheel. It took decades before this world-wide "common sense" prevailed in the U.S. (thanks to gigabytes on disks imported from abroad?), but apparently not 100 % yet. There was never any doubt among many on the Metric Board, ASTM, ANMC, USMA as to the "right" (i.e. worldwide prevalent) pronunciation. It cost US some money before the others smarted out on this issue. Too bad that the NBS (now NIST) posters, prescribing jiga, are still about. As with the -er -re issue -- the provincial thinking helped to kill metricating USA. Stan Jakuba PS: I took it as self-evident that the "G" dispute had nothing to do with the brevity discussion ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Hooper To: Stan Jakuba Sent: 09 Jul 14, Tuesday 22:22 Subject: Re: [USMA:45245] Re: Brevity Stan, I admit that I know computer memory is sometimes measured in gigabites and that this is usually pronounced with the hard "g". However, I have not been led to believe that the hard "g" for the SI prefix (giga) is universal. I have always understood that the Greek "giga" is the root of such words as "giant" and "gigantic", and hence would be pronounced with the soft "g" sound. Even the name of the letter,"g", is pronounced with a soft "g" I realize also that pronouncing "giga" as "jih-guh" is inconsistent since that has the first "g" soft and the second "g" hard. I thought (still think?) the jury is out on this question but I am open arguments to the contrary. By the way, the pronunciation of "giga" is not relevant to the point I was making (recopied below). That had to do with the length/complexity if the unit's pronunciation, not whether the "g" is soft or hard. Regards, Bill On Jul 14 , at 11:50 AM, Stan Jakuba wrote: Bill, are you telling a computer store clerk how much computer memory you want in jig....? Everybody else says gig.... (as in giggle) latest since 1980. Thus a gig-a-watt, not jig... ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Hooper On May 10 , at 9:45 PM, Stan Jakuba wrote: As another example, ... the same with GW. Let's use only the symbol, not the word gigawatt, and pronounce it g w . This one example does not illustrate your point well. Your point was that pronouncing the letters of the symbol is simpler (or at least shorter) than pronouncing the name of the unit. Pronouncing the letters of the symbol "GW" is LONGER than pronouncing the name "gigawatt": "GW" is pronounced "gee dub-uhl-you", four syllables. "Gigawatt" is pronounced "jig-a-watt", only three syllables.
