On Friday 17 July 2009 07:00:14 John M. Steele wrote: > 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.
The rule is the same in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French except: "g" before "e" or "i" is /ʒ/ in French and Portuguese, /dʒ/ in Italian, and /x/ in Spanish. To pronounce /g/ before "e" or "i", you write "gh" in Italian and "gu" in the other languages. French has more exceptions than, I think, the other three combined, but I don't remember any exceptions to this rule offhand. "gn" is /ñ/ in both French and Italian. The other two write this sound differently, e.g. "nhoque". "g" in German is usually /g/, except in "ng" which is /ŋ/, but there are exceptions, such as "Orange" which is /oranʒə/. /g/ is sometimes pronounced [k] or [ç]. Pierre
