"Fung guy"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

A glance at the handy dictionaries shows "fun-jie" /fVndZaj/ or so in
ALL (including Century, EB, MW, AHD, RHUD).

The more recent dictionaries ALSO show "fung-ghie" /fVNgaj/ or so
(including AHD, RHUD).

MW3 shows the both, MW2 only the one.

It looks like the MW Collegiate dictionary changed from only-one to both
around the 1950's (between 6th and 7th?).

Both pronunciations seem to be familiar to me.

I suppose one can try to avoid the issue by using "funguses".

Latin is still offered at my local high school, and it seems popular (I
_think_ the other language choices are limited to French and Spanish).
As James Harbeck says, though, this doesn't signify since the Classical
Latin pronunciation is 'not one of the choices'.

-- Doug Wilson

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org