G is the most confusing letter in the English language

I don’t know how to explain how this popped into my head. I was walking on some train tracks close to my house, when it just hit me.

There is a phonetical gap in the English language that I have never heard anyone address.

Follow me now. When you read the word “get,” you know how to pronounce it. It uses the hard g sound, followed by the soft e. You know how the word is pronounced because you learned to recognize it by sight. Same goes for the word “gecko.”

But these words are not regular. They are exceptions to the soft g rule of the language.

A quick recap on that rule: For instance, when you see the words “gentrify,” “gesticulate,” and “general,” to name a few, you know to soften the g sound. This is a steadfast rule of the language. When a “g” or a “c” is followed by either an “e,” “y,” or an “i,” the sound is softened and turned into a “j” sound or an “s” sound, respectively. This is how we get words like “ginger,” “gender,” “gyrate,” “cement” and “cycle.”

Now, let’s go back to the words “get” and “gecko.”

These words represent the gap. We have no existing way to write the sound that the first two letters of the word “get” make in a phonetically unambiguous way. There. Is. Literally. No. Way. In the Oxford English dictionary, the pronunciation of the word “get” is noted as — wait for it — “get.”

In other words, the word is spelled as it is pronounced, but the way that it is spelled simultaneously introduces a rule of the language to which it is one of the only exceptions. It makes no fucking sense.

The eternal battle of how to pronounce the word “gif” is also representative of this gap. How is it pronounced? Well, that depends on if you believe the word is an exception to the soft g rule or not. And as far as visual clues as to whether it is an exception to that rule or not go, there’s nothing to go on.

The soft c rule doesn’t introduce this problem. The letter “k” only does one job. So if you wanted to phonetically spell how the word “kettle” is spelled, you would have no problem doing so. But this is the issue with the “g.” Not only is it able to perform both the hard g and the soft g sounds, similar to the flexibility of the letter “c” — it’s the only way to make the hard g sound. The “g,” if you will,” is its own “k,” in addition to being able to make the soft g sound. But there’s nothing to replace it with to clarify the ambiguity.

See how confusing that is?

Now, for an exercise. A few years ago I worked as a tutor, teaching kids with learning disabilities and emotional issues how to read. We had to teach them phonetics 101, and all the rules that go along with it. On the day I had my interview for that job, we had something of a test. My former boss spoke a few gibberish words out loud, and asked us to write down phonetically how you would spell out the made up word. That’s what I want you to think of here.

So, for the next few words, let’s pretend the soft g rule didn’t exist. “Gentle” would become a different, nonsensical word, a different sound. So would “gem” and “genome.” Omitting the soft g rule, you can hear how that new word would sound. But you would have failed the test. There is no way to write down what you are hearing in the English language, without it getting confused with one of these existing words. Go ahead for a second and try if you’re curious. It won’t work.

It would have been a brilliant, cruel trick question for the test.

Why does this matter? I don’t know. A few of the other commonly used words in the English language that try to get around this awkwardness are the words “ghetto,” “guess,” “guest,” “give” and “gift.” Basically, it’s shit that someone threw on the wall, and over time people have learned to recognize them by sight. But these workarounds to the soft g rule damn sure don’t make up some kind of code, or rhyme or reason. They just… are.

When you think about it, the sound that the word “get” makes in particular is pretty absent from the English language altogether. Maybe years down the road, we’ll figure out this phonetical gap thing, and all these new words that start with “ge” and “gi” with a (hard g sound) will start to emerge. Imagine all the possibilities! I place my bet that these are the words of the future.

At the risk of rambling on, I’ll just cut this right here. My head hurts, even if I was an English major after all. English doesn’t make any sense, no matter how hard you try to press it.

Somebody, pass me the gin.