How do you pronounce "gigabyte"?

[semitone]

I always feel awkward using this word. Is it "gig-a-byte"? "Guy-ga-byte?" "Jig-a-byte?" "Jye-ga-byte?"

Thanks-a-boonch!

[ednew]

Like Big-ah-Bite only with a hard "G" kickstart

[Mark Davis]

GIG like a frog gig a bite. NO J in the mix.

[urizen]

Originally Posted by semitone

I always feel awkward using this word. Is it "gig-a-byte"? "Guy-ga-byte?" "Jig-a-byte?" "Jye-ga-byte?"

Thanks-a-boonch!

GIzjha-b'TAY (oviosl, non'eh)!

[bobthecanadian]

yup... no soft j in this word.

[Buckocaster51]

I beg to differ.

While the battle is lost, and it will never change...back in the olden days when virtually nothing needed that prefix...it was indeed pronounced with a soft "g" sound.

Comes from the same root as the word "giant."

If you always have, and always will, pronounce that "guy-ant" I will let you off the hook.

Back in the 70s I needed to study SI a lot. The originators of SI intended it to be pronounced with a soft "g."

If you remember the movie "Back to the Future," you might remember that when that film was made, it was still very much a soft "g."

It wasn't until the 90s that, for some reason unknown to me, it was absconded with, and corrupted by the IT people.

But I don't intend to die on that hill. A well-rounded person will know what you mean however you pronounce it...and you don't really need to talk to somebody that isn't well-rounded.

If you know what I mean!

[casterway]

Hmmm. Interesting. Think of the word 'Gigantic'. Jy-ga-bite???

[TDPRI]

GIG A BITE

Simple as that -- just plain Gig-a-bite.

Before gigabyte there was "gigawatt" and it was always pronounced gig-a-watt not jig-a-watt.


(In "Back to the Future" they did say it that way, but they were using it like a fake word not like a real word -- A gigabyte of storage cost over $80,000 at that time and was pretty much never seen as a reality in computer systems)

[casterway]

From the Merriam Webster Dictionary, they go with Jig-a-bite.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gigabytes


From Wikipedia, they say either is acceptable, because of it's origins.

In English the initial g of giga is properly pronounced with a hard g (as in giggle) but is sometimes pronounced with a soft g (as in giant). According to the American writer Self, in the 1920s a German committee member of the International Electrotechnical Commission proposed giga- as a prefix for 109, drawing on a verse by the humorous poet Christian Morgenstern that appeared in the third (1908) edition of Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs). This suggests a hard German g was originally intended as the pronunciation. Self was unable to ascertain at what point the soft g pronunciation came into occasional use, but as of 1995 current practice had returned to hard g.[1] A prominent example of the soft G pronunciation is found in the 1985 movie Back to the Future, where gigawatts was pronounced as jigawatts.

In the United States, it is well documented that the National Bureau of Standards issued pronunciation guides for the metric prefixes in the 1960s and again as late as the 1980s, giving the 'g' in "giga" a soft "j" sound, thus formalizing the pronunciation as "jiga"

[David Barnett]

NOT like in "Back To The Future".

[Mark Davis]

I always heard it as gig same slang used to describe a performance at a concert or club. Like hey I gotta cool gig at 4th street cafe Friday night.

[xjazzy]

Here in Portugal we say Jig-a-byte because the "e" and the "i" after a "g" always turns it for a "j".

[reverbbb]

In America, we ALWAYS break pronounciation rules. Why? Because we are Americans - why else?