Hard and soft G

In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages (including English), the letter ⟨g⟩ is used in different contexts to represent two distinct phonemes, often called hard and soft ⟨g⟩. The sound of a hard ⟨g⟩ (which often precedes the non-front vowels ⟨a o u⟩) is usually the voiced velar plosive [ɡ] (as in gangrene or golf) while the sound of a soft ⟨g⟩ (typically before ⟨i e y⟩) may be a fricative or affricate, depending on the language. In English, the sound of soft ⟨g⟩ is the affricate /dʒ/, as in Genesis, giraffe, and gymnasium.

This alternation has its origins in a historical palatalization of /ɡ/ which took place in Late Latin, and led to a change in the pronunciation of the sound [ɡ] before the front vowels [e] and [i]. Later, other languages not descended from Latin, such as English, inherited this feature as an orthographic convention. The Scandinavian languages, however, have undergone their shift independently.

In English orthography, the pronunciation of hard ⟨g⟩ is /ɡ/ and that of soft ⟨g⟩ is /dʒ/; the French soft ⟨g⟩, /ʒ/, survives in a number of French loanwords (e.g. regime, genre). In words of Greco-Latinate origin, the soft ⟨g⟩ pronunciation occurs before ⟨e i y⟩ while the hard ⟨g⟩ pronunciation occurs elsewhere. In some words of Germanic origin (e.g. get, give), loan words from other languages (e.g. geisha, pierogi), and irregular Greco-Latinate words (e.g. gynecology), the hard pronunciation may occur before ⟨e i y⟩ as well.

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