I was challenged over my contention that the Giga metric prefix is commonly mispronounced. I am contested on this every time I am talking to some moron in a place like Best Buy, yet my check of older dictionaries doesn’t even mention the hard G as an option. I say that Chris Lloyd was right in “Back to the Future”, and the leisure suit hard drive salesmen are wrong. What say the dopers?
I learned the metric system in the early '70s. I was tought that giga is pronounced with a hard G. I giga’s root is Greek, then wouldn’t it be pronouned with a hard G?
Dunno what the “rulebook” says. I’ve heard both; I’d say I used to hear (hard)Giga more in the past, and tend to hear more “Jiga” nowadays, but I’m not in the US (or even in the English speaking world) so I don’t know if this trend extends to you guys as well.
Since it’s a Greek root, it should probably be “G[h]iga”, but words eveolve away from their origins, and ultimately usage defines “right” and “wrong”, not the other way around.
It’s only ever been “gigga” here in Canada, not “jigga”. I was dismayed when I heard “jiggawatt” in Back To The Future; I thought that was just a Stupid Hollywood Science Error; I never knew that it was considered a standard pronunciation at one time.
I’ve never heard anything but the hard g. But I do have an ancient colleague who pronounces it with a long i. And he remembers computing when it was two roomfuls of chicks inverting matrices by hand.
You know, these threads come up now and again about how to pronounce some word. I’m just always stunned how nobody bothers to look it up in the dictionary.
The two I consulted this morning list both pronunciations as acceptable. Case closed… or is it?
When were these dictionaries published? I would be interested to know if there was some kind of shift over time. Not that common usage doesn’t trump all, but I would like to know. I was told that the soft G was preferred, at least in the past.
/At least there isn’t any controversy about “Tera”
//or is there?
My dictionary is a Merriam-Webster from about 1998 or so, which is online, too. But I forgot what the other one in my office is… but it may date from the 1980s. “Gigabyte” was not in there, but “giga-” was.
American Heritage Online has a pronunciation guide which you can click on and hear an authoritative, manly voice saying, “jiga-bite.” If that voice doesn’t convince you that it is an okay pronunciation, then nothing will.
Then I went to engineering school, and was taught jiga…by the electrical engineering anc communication profs. The comp sci guys had giga-nothing in those days. (early 80’s)
My 1980 version M-W lists both pronunciations, with “jig-uh” listed first. The only words listed beginning with “giga-” were “gigabit,” “gigacycle,” and “gigahertz,” all of which I understand, but none of which have I ever heard in conversation.
Since we’re all adding our own anecdotes: my Dad was in college during the 60s, studying sciences, and when Back to the Future came out he didn’t bat an eyelash at the professor’s pronouncing it with a ‘J’ sound. We even had a little discussion about how much energy that was, and Dad used the ‘J’ sound then, too.
P.s. according to Dad, at that time if you studied sciences or engineering you were required to study German, as well.
