It’s interesting debate to observe from my perspective as my native tongue has no different pronunciations for letters, they are always the same regardless of their placement in words. G is always pronounced the same, and so is P. (Spoiler: it’s hard G and hard P).
This brought another thing in my mind about soft G. Let’s take for example Gin, which is with soft G I believe (it’s hard G here because there is only hard G). Then there is the acronym GT for Gin & Tonic. The question is, in English language countries, is the acronym pronounced jay-T instead of gee-T?
It’s basically the same with English always using a hard G for native English words. The complication comes from the fact that English preserves the pronunciation and spelling of loan words and English and loan words make up something like half of all words in English. The vast majority of words in English that use a soft G are French or Latin loan words.
English preserves the pronunciation and spelling of loan words
English doesn’t preserve the pronunciation. It approximates the pronunciation while keeping the spelling, and that pronunciation drifts over time and changes in different places. See: Lieutenant, a word that has two wildly different pronunciations in English, neither of which sound anything like the original French word.
It’s interesting debate to observe from my perspective as my native tongue has no different pronunciations for letters, they are always the same regardless of their placement in words. G is always pronounced the same, and so is P. (Spoiler: it’s hard G and hard P).
This brought another thing in my mind about soft G. Let’s take for example Gin, which is with soft G I believe (it’s hard G here because there is only hard G). Then there is the acronym GT for Gin & Tonic. The question is, in English language countries, is the acronym pronounced jay-T instead of gee-T?
ive only heard G&T pronounced jee & tee
It’s basically the same with English always using a hard G for native English words. The complication comes from the fact that English preserves the pronunciation and spelling of loan words and English and loan words make up something like half of all words in English. The vast majority of words in English that use a soft G are French or Latin loan words.
English doesn’t preserve the pronunciation. It approximates the pronunciation while keeping the spelling, and that pronunciation drifts over time and changes in different places. See: Lieutenant, a word that has two wildly different pronunciations in English, neither of which sound anything like the original French word.