why is margarine'' pronounced with a soft g

Lesgles 04:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC) A hard g is typically (but not always) pronounced as a voiced plosive,… In answer to Jess' question in the first post, Burchfield gives 'gaol' as the only other word that has a soft 'g' before an 'a'. ), but in the US "oleomargarine" was the federally defined name until 1951, when "margarine" was first allowed. I believe that it always used to be pronounced with a hard g, and then it was popularly abbreviated to marge (soft g) and the soft g was transferred back to the long form. One of my boys wants to be a physicist. It would be more logical, though.

Anybody know why this is pronounced with a soft g rather than a hard g? Hard and soft G: | In the |Latin-based| orthographies of many European languages (including Englis... World Heritage Encyclopedia, the aggregation of the largest online encyclopedias available, and the most definitive collection ever assembled. Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa The wealth of evidence for “GIF” with a soft G will follow right after this.

A hard g vs. a soft g is a feature that occurs in many languages, including English, in which two distinct major sounds (phonemes) are represented by the Latin letter g . That pattern also holds of margin and Margaret. When I was last in Britain I heard it pronounced with a hard g in TV advertisements. It’s the way that string of letters tends to be pronounced.

Anybody know why this is pronounced with a soft g rather than a hard g?Are there any other common English words in which "ga" is a soft g? Regards, Arfur . Why soft margarine is soft and hard margarine is not - Answer .

Oct 06 … The question was - Why do we pronounce margarine with a soft g? Yes, in theory, a word spelled “g-i-f” could be pronounced either way, but in practice, it should be pronounced GIF—with a soft G. This section was just to debunk the argument that “ghif” is the only logical pronunciation. G before the letters E, I or Y is realised as /ʤ/, elsewhere it is /g/. Technically, margarine should be pronounced with a hard g, but according to the OED, this pronunciation became rare "in the second half of the 20th century". What are the differences between soft margarine and hard margarine in terms of their structure In margarines (or any long chain hydrocarbon) the m.p. The notable exceptions are gaol (now more commonly spelled jail ) and margarine (a French borrowing whose original hard g softened for unknown reasons, even though the name Margaret has a hard g ).

I still hear the hard g pronunciation from time to time. The typical US pronunciation is with a soft g, as MAR-juh-run (Riepma 1970).

I personally have never met anyone who uses the hard g in this word in English. In Europe the term "margarine" (generally pronounced with a hard g, as MAR-guh-reen) became the standard at a rather early date (when?? From such a rule, it would be reasonable to demand that the only correct pronunciation of GIF is with the so-called soft G, /ʤ/. As this gentleman was French, that would fix the … Are there any other common English words in which "ga" is a soft g? I asked him the other day what he thought he'd like to be for Halloween and he said, "The Higgs boson." According to Burchfield in the new Fowler, the soft and hard g pronunciations of margarine battled it out all through the 20th century, and only in the last decade did the soft g predominate. G before the letters E, I or Y is realised as /ʤ/, elsewhere it is /g/. It the OP thinks that’s not consistent, it’s the way English is.

is lowered by having more double bonds in the.. But such a rule isn’t total — it can’t account for anger, or borrowings from the Japanese (geisha) or French (margarine).

I don't know if any real people pronounced it that way, though. Perhaps margarine is pronounced thus because it is said to have been invented by Hippolyte Mege-Mouries. The orthography of soft g is fairly consistent: a soft g is almost always followed by e i y .