Vegan prescriptivism

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:20 PM +0100 6/29/01, Lynne Murphy wrote:
>Thanks for this, but I'm a little confused:
>
>--On Friday, June 29, 2001 9:12 am -0400 "Douglas G. Wilson"
><douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
>
>...
>>When "ga" is (unusually) pronounced with "soft 'g'" (/dZ/), is some
>>special semantic baggage conveyed? Consider "margarine", "veganism",
>>"gaol". (^_^)
>
>A little confused by this, too, since I've never heard 'veganism'
>pronounced with a soft 'g'!
>
Me either (and I always wondered about the long "e", i.e. [i:], of
"vegan" too), but maybe Doug was alluding to the fact that the "g" is
unexpectedly hard here, given the etymological source.  (It's even
soft in "veg out", which I've never figured out how to spell.)

larry