Talk:margarine

Does anyone know why the <g> in margarine is pronounced [dʒ]? CMEHalverson 22:14, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• It isn't always. I used to work for Unilever (an Anglo-Dutch manufacturer of the stuff); half the people at the factories pronounced it with a hard "g" (as in (deprecated template usage) garrison and half like "dj" (sorry, I don't speak phonetic). SemperBlotto 22:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

What does it sound like in (deprecated template usage) margaric acid? Equinox ◑ 22:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

g as in garrison is just /ɡ/. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:23, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

• OED and Merriam Webster give only the pronunciation with [dʒ]. The Anglo-Dutch pronunciation is not standard and was probably influenced by the Dutch pronunciation with a 'hard g' [g]. I've heard German speakers do the same thing. Also, why would it ever be pronounced [dʒ], since neither English nor the source language, French, normally pronounce /g/ as [dʒ] before /a/? (French margarique uses 'hard g', and in fact this comes from Greek μάργαρον which also doesn't use the 'soft g'). CMEHalverson 05:30, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Dutch doesn't have the sound [ɡ]. It was probably influenced simply by the spelling. Of course, there'd be a very simple solution, namely to change the spelling to "margerine". But it seems to be anathema to the English-speaking world to ever change the spelling of any word. (And when they do change one, they get rid of the harmless "u" in "honour" and leave the precarious "h"... Sigh!)

• I remember reading in The Story of Language, a book by linguist Mario Pei (1949, Lippincott, →ISBN, that the word was originally pronounced with a hard g, but that association with the name "Marjorie" led to the change in pronunciation. I suspect that might be conjecture on his part, but it certainly is quite plausible. Kostaki mou (talk) 19:39, 10 April 2017 (UTC)