on pronouncing "gyros" (recycled Linguist List posting)

[Laurence Horn]

>James D. SMITH wrote:
>
>> I'm interested in the pronunciation of "gyroscope"
>> since before it was
>> taken over by Remington-Rand, my father worked for
>> Sperry Gyroscope in
>> Lake Success, NY and at Sperry it was pronounced
>> with [g]--like the
>> Disney character Gyro Gearloose.  However, I have a
>> faint recollection
>> of the toy as pronounced with a [dZ]!
>
>Interesting ... I've never heard gyro or gyroscope,
>whether referring to a toy or a high-precision device
>or the name of a company or Disney's Gyro Gearloose,
>pronounced with a [g] - as in 'gun' - or [dZ] (unless
>[dZ] is the same as [dj] as in 'Djibouti', in which
>case I still don't think it's what I've heard.)  It's
>always sounded like more like plain ol' [j] - as in
>'gem' and 'jump' - to me.
>
I suspect that other posters are using the [dZ] notation for what you're
using [j] for:  the voiced alveopalatal affricate, a.k.a. "plain ol' [j]".
If you're limited to ascii and you're worried that [j] without a hacek
might be read as a high front rounded vowel (as implausible as that might
be for the initial segment of 'gyro'), [dZ] is the best you can do.  The
relevant constrast is of course that between the aforesaid affricate and
the voiced velar stop.

larry