Doug [he/him]

Yes but he serves a different community

No, but I’m gonna run his code anyway

I’ve never had the problem of not being understood.

You are either a uniquely spectacular communicator or a liar. It’s not for me to say which. Regardless that’s not the point. If you use the soft g sound and are not understood then, by your own explanation you are saying it wrong. That’s something you need to contend with.

And regardless of how long the time period was

So no time requirement on archaic then?

there was a time when one guy spoke aloud the word when he invented it.

As is true of every word and yet I’m sure there are words you say differently than the first person. I’ll bet you don’t say the name of the element with the atomic number 13 the same way the man who discovered it does. Not to mention who knows how many words England took from France, mangled, and then got adjusted again in America. Who is the correct first person there, or does the first person only matter with this specific issue?

You can use the new pronunciation

I will as well many others.

as I have for 30+ years,

Me too! Still doesn’t make yours right and mine wrong no matter how hard you try to deride it as “new” when it’s barely newer than the format.

and I will continue to do so

I can’t stop you. I can think you ridiculous for doing so but my suspicion that this would be the only reason I would think that of you diminishes with each response you send.

both are acceptable

Perhaps, but one seems to be falling out of favor. Just like a double space after a period or writing out words greater than ten but less than one hundred.

I could call it a moving picture and not be wrong, doesn’t mean people wouldn’t think me weird for doing so. I would have to deal with that the way you need to deal with what your choices cause people to think of you.

If you don’t like it, that’s a you problem.

Sure, but it won’t stop me from making my own conclusions just like any other thing. The same is true for all of humanity to varying degrees.

people only started using the new pronunciation in the last 10-15.

As someone else pointed out already, this is untrue. While it may not have been popular in your circles, it definitely was in others. I’ve been saying it with a hard g as long as you have with a soft and I’m not the originator either.

English linguistics doesn’t indicate anything at all.

They absolutely do. That’s why you can sound out a word you’ve never seen before. You may not always be right when you do because they indicate, they don’t define.

There are no rules about word construction or pronunciation.

There are, there are just exceptions. For example, an e at the end of the word is silent. I’m certain you can give me a word where it’s not, but there are at least six in this paragraph alone where it is.

if you are understood then you have pronounced them correctly

In this logic if someone has been pronouncing a word all their life with a single pronunciation and travels to another location with a much different accent they can only now be pronouncing the word wrong.

If understanding is also the only metric then a hard g would still be preferable. Not only does a written g tend to make people lean to a hard g in my experience, but there’s more words that could be mistaken for a soft g pronunciation.

You could argue that the original pronunciation is archaic,

Could I not argue that the original pronunciation has fallen out of favor?

the word itself is like 35 years old

Is there a time requirement for pronunciations to become archaic?

since there was only one acceptable pronunciation

Which isn’t a time that existed, as we’ve established

who aren’t likely to change.

Given your stance on language this is absolutely a you problem. If the rest of us collectively decided to understand it as only with a hard g, you would not be understood and therefore be pronouncing it wrong by your own logic.

Telling me not to is what makes English worse.

In your opinion. “Jiggawatt” is not a common English pronunciation outside of back to the future references at this point. People mostly settled on one over the other because it makes sense to pronounce a word a similar way to be more easily understood. It’s not always the case, sure, but I think you’ll find multiple pronunciations are the exception, not the rule. That’s why you can come up with a good handful of such words, but you’ll be using words with single pronunciations to talk about them.

Become popular? It’s been popular roughly for the lifespan of the format. It’s hardly language’s fault the developer wanted to make an unfunny reference to a since forgotten peanut butter slogan.

On the other hand linguistics indicate a hard g sound with the construction of the word, constituent words aside. Plenty of four letter words starting with the gi combo have a hard g, including but not limited to gift which you may notice is very similarly constructed.

Whatever else the English language may throw at us, people appreciate consistency because we can make some sense of the world. A hard g is the consistent, predictable, sensible choice for the limited availability of those virtues English offers.

I didn’t want to come off dismissive asking how often you’re talking about those specific kinds of plants but maybe it’s a relevant question after all lol

I think you and I have very different experiences. I rarely see that kind of correction if ever.

When you’re in a public space you never know when your words are being consumed by an ESL speaker. I think the best approach is natural yet accurate. They’re going to encounter contractions when dealing with native speakers, but the difference between it’s and its, for example, can be tricky so try to use them as taught.

Spelling mistakes can absolutely be an issue. It’s already hard enough to figure out English spelling without native speakers making it worse. Add on to that the difficulty in any added language of working out near homophones, let alone actual homophones.

I knew someone who was pretty decent with English as their third language but had trouble keeping Texas and taxes straight. I know another guy who is American and uses no in place of know. That one threw me for a while before I figured out what he was trying to say.

I will admit, I do like that “technically” the plural for octopus is “supposed to be” octopods (pronounced like oc-tip-o-dees) but that’s a fun “fact”, not a correction I’ve ever tried to make.

90+% of the time you get common mistakes. Should ofs, they’re - there - their confusions, apostrophes for plurals.

The kind of thing that confuses ESL speakers. The decent thing would seem to be to try and stick to the way it’s taught rather than go with the “it doesn’t matter” route when it absolutely matters to some.

I’m juggling 3 languages

We Americans like to forget that anyone might have any trouble understanding English especially in cases of polyglots.

I don’t know which is your native tongue but from this comment it looks like you’re doing a fine job.

Except that it would be “they should, of course,”.

Also that person may have known what you meant, but another might not and may have any number of reasons for not asking.

Better communication skills are a worthwhile goal and there’s no good reason to not learn and grow.

It never ceases to amaze me that the actor who played an idiot on News Radio, and never really seemed like he was acting, has become what he has.

Given him and Andy Dick both were on there, maybe someone should check in on Dave Foley and Stephen Root.

Sorry, can’t help but make light of this fucker’s bullshit, pardon the French.

It’s no trouble at all, but I don’t know what a seal has to do with any of this or how you spelled phoque so badly

A worthwhile thing to keep in mind whether it’s for tea, supplements, or whatever, is that medication is based on things that were observed from “natural” sources.

For example, willow bark was/is/has been used for pain and inflammation. It also contains salicin which is similar to acetysalicylic acid, which you’ll know better as aspirin.

Does that mean all the things people say do a thing work? Not at all. Do some of them have varying degrees of effect of some percentage of people? Yes.

I’ve got three monitors and a few other PCs that are all interconnected so I can mouse off one on to another.

I just turn my chair

That sounds a lot like

My rear passenger tire was about 3psi low so I bought a new Grand Cherokee

I suspect something else is going on there. I made that switch years ago and haven’t found a site that doesn’t play nice with Firefox in that time.

I’ve heard accounts both ways. I’m not quite old enough to have seen it new, but I’ve known people who said it was fantastic and people who said it was never better than it is now.

Shrug

It’s slow with bad pacing. There’s are things that are obviously supposed to look impressive but even if they ever did (for which there’s disagreement between the nerds old enough to remember) it absolutely did not age well. Those are the obvious ones off the top of my head without having watched it in a few years.

I guess I’ll have to give this HD director’s cut a shot but I’m pretty skeptical.