I love that link because it absolutely destroys the argument that it should be pronounced 'jif' just because the coiner of the word says so. The way I see it, the guy may have coined the word, but he is not the creator of the English language, and therefore has no right to contradict grammatical or pronunciation conventions within the language. And current conventions within the language say it should be pronounced 'gif'.
Actually, I found this link pretty crappy, as basically it's just "it should be pronounced like that because I say so".
His main argument is factually false ("Every word that starts with G, then a vowel, then an F, is pronounced with a hard G.", while this very thread is filled with counter-examples), his reasonings are weird (he uses "gift" as an argument why "gif" should use a hard G "because it's the closest word to it", so I suppose "head" should be pronounced like "had" following the same "logic" ?), he arrogantly assert that anyone who doesn't pronounce it the way he consider it should be, does it only because "the creator said so" (while I'd bet most people wouldn't even know the creator said anything about it).
It's just plain garbage, TBH. I mean, there is one and only argument, it's "most of the time, english uses a hard G", and that's about it.
And when it comes to "the creator said so", it certainly seems pretty relevant to me. The creator certainly can't redefine english, but when english allows for several correct pronounciations, then the person who invented the word definitely has le
gitimacy about the correct one. That's especially true for names - if someone tells you his name is pronounced in a specific way (and this way is correct in english), are you going to argue that no, you know better how it should be said ?
Well,
giraffe, agility, giant, gibbet and
origin are originally French,
gin and
gibberish come from Dutch and
ageing is spelt with an E
Average is also from the French, but we say all such
-age words with a soft G, especially as G is usually soft before E. G is always hard in Latin and Greek, I believe, so
gymnasion wouldn't fit with the French-influenced softening of the G.
The above of course is the problem with English - we have so many foreign words compared to our Germanic roots, pronunciation can be very difficult!
I don't really see how pointing that such word comes from latin/greek/french and not a
germanic langua
ge, chan
ge anything about the fact that the g is often soft before e/i/y and as such "jif" is an acceptable pronounciation. It's not like "gif" had a definite etymolo
gy which told it should have a hard G.
... is a place in France. Come on, Mise.
Well, actually in France it's A
zincourt
