Words Where Rules About Soft "c"/"g" Not Followed
Cornell Kimball
In late September and early October, a thread in `sci.lang' noted
English words where (1) "g" is soft even when the following letter is not
"e/i/y," (2) where "c" is soft altho followed by a letter other than
"e/i/y," and (3) where "c" is hard when followed by "e/i/y."
This is a compilation of posts, edited so as to somewhat "flow." Some
parts are taken verbatim from the posters noted. For the rest, the text
is either taken from items that I posted to the thread at the time, or it
is text I recently wrote to tie the pieces together.
This covered both generic words and names.
Newsgroup: sci.lang
Subject: margarine
(Gustaaf Van Moorsel) writes:
>
> I have often wondered about the spelling vs. the pronunciation of
> 'margarin' in English. Are there other words in English where a 'g'
> precedes an 'a' and yet is pronounced as if it preceded an 'e'?
That's probably the most common such word which occurs in all
English dialects. Another, not quite as common one, is "algae."
Jacques Guy <j....@trl.telstra.com.au> writes:
> [....]
> Here is another that took me quite an effort to digest:
> "Reg" as the short form of "Reginald", hence pronounced "Redj"
Yes, and this calls to mind "to veg out." (I find it an interesting
item to note, but I'm not sure I'd count it as a full-fledged word.)
Names bring a new wrinkle to this, too. Someone also pointed out
some proper Greco-Roman names.
The cases noted so far appear in all English-speaking countries. A
couple of words in this category -- soft "g" in the absence of a following
"e," "i," or "y" -- are spelled as such basically in some dialects, but
not others.
Hans Kamp <hans...@introweb.nl> sent a message:
>
> What do you think of 'gaol'?
> [....]
Yes, that's another one. "Gaol," incidentally, is used sometimes in
Commonwealth countries, but not really seen at all in the U.S., where the
only spelling for this is "jail." (What's interesting is that even people
from the U.K. report that the spelling "gaol" isn't all that common.
Here's how it's been explained to me: The term -- no matter how you spell
it -- isn't used much in the U.K. to begin with, so neither "gaol" nor
"jail" are seen much. In the U.S., municipal (city or county) lock-up
facilities are "jails," but Brits use "prison" or some other term for such
places. (I have no idea about other English-speaking countries.) )
Then there are three spellings in American English where "g" is
pronounced like English "j" altho not followed by an "e," "i," or "y."
Those are "judgment," "acknowledgment," and "fledgling." It should be
noted that sometimes these are used in the U.K., and that sometimes
"judgement," "acknowledgement," and "fledgeling" appear in American
English.
Hans Kamp <hans...@introweb.nl> further noted:
> [....]
> also some names where the 'g' is pronounced as 'j'. One of
> them is 'Hodgkin'.
There, too, are some place names/street names like this in the U.K.,
e.g. "Wedgwood."
Finally to note, there's more to the word "margarine." I'm pretty
sure that for all dialects, "margarine" is the standard spelling.
"Margarin" is considered an acceptable variant at least in the U.S.; I
don't know about other countries.
In American English, the vowel in the final syllable is a schwa or
a short "i" ( [@] or [I] ). But a number of British speakers
pronounce the vowel in the last syllable as the English long "e" sound
( [i:] ). Too, British dictionaries give a variant pronunciation where
the "g" *is* pronounced like the hard "g" sound.
There are a few cases where "c" is pronounced like an "s" even tho
it's not before an "e/i/y." One is "Caesar/caesar," which can be spelled
with an upper-case or lower-case "c." Too, we have "caesar salad," now a
generic word but probably named after a restaurant (per "American Heritage
Dictionary," 3rd Edition, it may be named after a restaurant in Tijuana
named "Caesar's.) There is "caesarean section," the standard British/
Australian/New Zealand etc. spelling (but "cesarean" is standard for
American English).
There are also some uncommon scientific terms, things like
"coelacanth."
"Coelacanth," pronounced [`si: l@ k&nT] (at least in my American
English dictionary), is a kind of fish. It was first discovered in
fossil form in the 1800s, and it was assumed to be an extinct species.
Then in 1938, someone found a living specimen off the coast of South
Africa, and some refer to the coelacanth as a "living fossil."
In response to this, Avi Jacobson <avi_...@netvision.net.il> wrote:
> [....]
> Ah, but ae is not a and oe is not o; when these diphthongs lost their
> original pronunciations in Latin and defaulted to [e], they, too,
> activated the "softening rule" for g and c in the Latin-derived
> languages.
Getting into the fine points. The poster was asking about English
spellings. And, indeed, "coelacanth" is an example where the "c" is soft
without an "e," "i," or "y" *immediately* following *in an English
spelling*. This particular case -- "ae" and "oe" -- gets even trickier
because some will argue that they aren't really two pairs of separate
letters, but that each is really a digraph -- which we write as two
letters today, since the 26 letters of English don't include these
digraphs (altho far in our past, "ash" -- the "ae" digraph -- was used
in English).
Yes, you are right, that the process for the "c" becoming soft in
"Caesar" and "coelacanth" is the same process which makes "c" soft before
"e/i/y," as indeed the sound *was* an "e" as Latin evolved into the Romance
languages; thus, along with all the other case where "e" made "c" soft in
Latin-derived languages, it happened in "Caesar" and "coelacanth."
And true purists will remind us that it wasn't even "e" in Greek --
that is, it wasn't epsilon. As you probably know, the "ae" was originally
"alpha-iota" -- thus, "ai" -- in Greek (and it was "oi" for words now
with "oe"). Further, for those claiming that "ae" and "oe" are really
digraphs, I note here that in Greek they were clearly two separate
letters, just as we have in present-day English.
lila...@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross) added this one:
>
> In the Cornell and Avi exchanges in this thread (about hard v. soft c
> in various environs) so far I haven't noticed any mention of the word
> "facade", which is routinely spelled this way and pronounced /f@ 'sa:d/
> (hereabouts innyway) in English. Granted, it's "supposed to" have a
> cedilla under the c, but most English-users don't bother (or don't know
> how or don't have the capability). It's a pretty common word, and as far
> as I know nobody seriously spells it "fasade" or "faceade", or pronounced
> it "fakade"...
There are a few words where the letter "c" comes before "e/i/y" and
is pronounced like [k]. The most common is "soccer," the term that
Americans use for what the rest of the world calls "football." (And
Americans use the term "football" for a game with a brown, oblong-shaped
ball (and for the ball itself), known as "American football" to the rest
of the world.)
Looking at spellings used in all English-speaking countries, there
are a few others if you count very rarely used words, things like
"zincify."
Avi Jacobson <avi_...@netvision.net.il> noted:
> [....]
> "Celtic" ['kEl tIk] is fairly common, I would have thought.
Yes, but I see this as a borderline case, as there are a number of
people who pronounce this with an initial [s]. I usually hear it
pronounced as ['sEl t@k]/['sEl tIk] in the U.S. (I'll let people in the
Commonwealth speak for themselves.)
The "American Heritage Dictionary" does list the "k" pronunciation
first, but I rarely hear that in speech. I've often wondered if the
editors of AHD even bother going into the streets with their tape
recorders, of if they're getting all their pronunciation samples from
university lectures. Scholars, and a few people of Celtic background, are
the only ones I've heard use the "k" pronunciation.
I will note, too, that AHD gives "Keltic" and "Kelt" as alternate
forms of "Celtic" and "Celt." I don't recall seeing them in print
anywhere (except on the pages of AHD, of course :-) ).
Christian Weisgerber (na...@mips.pfalz.de) asked:
> [....]
> So, for all the UEFA Cup aficionados, how is the "celtic" in
> "Celtic Glasgow" (the soccer team) pronounced?
> Any Scot here who could give an authoritative answer?
sj...@cus.cam.ac.uk (Simon Buck) responded:
> [....]
> Er, <Glasgow Celtic>, actually, (or more usually just <Celtic>, since
> everyone in the Kingdom has heard of them), and it is pronounced with a
> soft <c> = /s/.
>
> In any other context, use /k/.
> [....]
> Not a Scot, but authoritative nevertheless.
One thing is invariable in the U.S.: The basketball team "The Boston
Celtics" is *always" pronounced with an "s."
One word is this category is a spelling used in many English-speaking
countries, but as with "gaol" and "judgment" noted above, is not used in
all Anglophone areas.
pru...@pitt.edu (Alexander R Pruss) wrote:
>
> How about "sceptic"? Alex.
Good one. ("Sceptic" is the standard spelling for that in British
English, while "skeptic" is the standard spelling in American English.)
co...@euler.Berkeley.EDU (Coby (Jacob) Lubliner) noted:
> [....]
> There are also pasts and gerunds of verbs whose infinitives end in "c":
> arced/arcing, sicced/siccing...
More good ones. Above, I noted the term "zincify." The word "zinc,"
usually used as a noun, can also be used a verb meaning "to coat with
zinc." AHD gives "zinced," "zincing" for inflected forms, but also lists
"zincked," "zincking" as variants.
Regarding "arcing," that's the only spelling I've seen in print (and
rarely at that). But AHD also lists "arcking" as a variant. With derived
forms of "sic," it's a similar story. "Sicced" etc. are the usual forms
used (and the only ones I've seen, and rarely at that; I guess I need to
read more books involving attack dogs :-) ), but AHD gives "sicked" etc.
as variants. Needless to say, "sicked" and "sicking" can be rather
ambiguous; indeed, without the right context, I'd probably think only of
"sick" meaning "ill" and be a bit perplexed.
Going to really uncommon words, "specification" is sometimes
shortened to "spec." While "spec" is usually used a noun just like
"specification," it has been used as a verb. The entries in AHD for the
derived forms of it are "spec'd" and "spec'ing," or alternately, "specced"
and "speccing."
Another one where "c" is pronounced like "k" even tho followed by
an
"e/i/y"... If we're counting proper nouns, we can add "Quebecer" to
the
list. Some U.S. newspapers use the term "Quebecois" to describe
someone
from Que'bec. Some use "Quebecker." And I've seen "Quebecer," which
of
course is pronounced just like "Quebecker."
-------------------------------------------------------------
Cornell Kimball
Los Angeles
corn...@ix.netcom.com
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