Jif or Gif?

For a decent chunk of time I was a cryptologic linguist for the NSA. Weird work if you can get it. My job (what I’m allowed to say) relied largely on information that comes from foreign languages. In a nutshell, I analyzed the shit out of the minutia of language.

Nowadays I’m a software engineer. Again… a job that revolves around linguistic syntax.

All that being said, I am please to announce, I have once and for all solved the age-old question: is it “g”if or “j”if?

Rules

First, we must recognize certain linguistic rules; primarily those revolving around the letter G, as well as those pertaining to mutagenic properties of vowels. Also, AOU are Broad vowels, and EI are Slender vowels.

1. G is always pronounced as a hard-G within -ing
2. G is almost always pronounced as a hard-G when succeeded by a broad vowel
3. Both E and I are mutagenic. In fact, they are known to the State of California to cause cancer.
4. G is almost always pronounced as a soft-G when succeeded by a slender vowel.

For example: giraffe has a soft-G and is succeeded by a slender vowel. Same goes for geospatial, vagina, advantaged, afterimage, etc., whereas, graph, gargle, gauge all have a hard-G.

Since English is by definition a creole language it has a slew of borrowed words and peculiar spellings. As a result, this leads exceptions to the aforementioned G and Vowel rules. For example: grifter has both a hard-G and a slender vowel. However, the etymology of grifter shows it stems from graft which demonstrates the G succeeded by a broad vowel rule. Often times when the doer of the action is a variation of the original word, the vowels can shuffle around or completely change, but the preexisting consonant sounds remain. Besides, should we change the g-sound to a soft-G, phonetically we get drifter, which is pretty damn close in meaning to grifter.

Gift (instead of jift), is often used in pro-”G”if arguments; however, this is a perfect example of the English creole since it stems from theOld Norse word yift.

Programmatically: Black zebra with white stripes?

Ok. You still doubt me. Let’s go with the Madagascar question: am I black zebra with white stripes, or a white zebra with black stripes?

Let’s count ’em. If there are more soft-Gs preceding slender vowels than there are hard-Gs then we have a general rule.

Out of the 65,535 English words phonetically sampled, 3,747 contained 1 or more g’s with a succeeding slender-vowel. Of those, 1,503 were pronounced with a hard-G, and 2,070 were pronounced with a soft-G. The remaining were largely borrowed French/Irish/Gaelic words with their own incredibly peculiar letter clusters which aren’t typically voiced at all.

There it is. A black zebra with white stripes. There are more soft-Gs than hard-Gs (with regards to Gs preceding slender vowels).

Still not convinced?

Steve Wilhite, the man who created the format in ’87 pronounces it with a soft-G. If anyone knows, it’s him.